RENOWNED lawyer and founder of Afe Babalola University, Ado-Ekiti (ABUAD) Aare Afe Babalola (SAN) has argued that “without an active and deliberate commitment by Nigerian governments to actively invest in all levels of education to promote availability, affordability and accessibility of quality education systems, education security may remain an illusory concept”.
The former Pro Chancellor and Chairman of Council of University of Lagos, UNILAG spoke yesterday on the topic: “The state of educational infrastructure in Africa: The way forward” at the 7th edition of the International Conference on Infrastructure Development (ICIDA), at the Lagos State Polytechnic, Ikorodu.
The senior lawyer was represented as the guest speaker at the occasion by the Provost of the College of Social and Management Sciences of ABUAD Prof. Adeolu Durotoye.
He affirmed that “school infrastructure, which includes suitable spaces to learn, is a very important component in ensuring successful education”.
Babalola, who lamented the progressively dwindling quality of education in Nigeria occasioned by the dearth of the necessary infrastructure, said: “For many years, Nigerian universities have at a geometric rate waned in quality, substance and prestige. Those of you here who attended and taught in any Nigerian university in the 1960’s and 1970’s would easily appreciate the extent of dilapidation of necessary physical structures and facilities in many of our universities today.
“A combination of infrastructural decay, lack of adequate funding, dearth of qualitative practical training curriculum and inability to attract the best teaching minds have all combined to stagnate our universities to the current appalling point whereby QS World University Ranking and Webometrics Rankings that rank universities based on facilities, programme and instructional content, perennially fail to rank or mention a single Nigerian university in the top 1,000 category.
“For many of us, this situation was an unbearable dishonour to the legacy of the first Premier of Western Region, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, that required urgent and aggressive turn around. It was the commitment to play a role in reforming Nigerian educational system that spurred me to initiate diverse reforms during my tenure as the Pro-Chancellor and Chairman, Governing Council of the University of Lagos. Many of the achievements we recorded during that period have been lauded globally and remain a reference point till today.”
He added: “No doubt one of the major challenges facing the education sector is the severe dearth of infrastructure. In the last several years, schools and other vocational institutions have collapsed due to abject neglect by successive regimes.”
For Nigeria to wriggle out of the quagmire of the infrastructural decay and catch up with the rest of the world in terms of quality education, he advocated the need for the country to comply with the international guideline by UNESCO, which directs each government to devote 26 per cent of its annual budget to funding education and invest in research and innovation.
In addition, he encouraged the alumni of tertiary institutions to learn how to give back to their Alma Mata by donating handsomely to them as is the practice in universities like Harvard, Yale and Stanford among others.