The Acting President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, has charged stakeholders in the nation’s education sector to work out better techniques and system that will restore the lost glory of the sector.
Specifically, Osinbajo asked relevant stakeholders in tertiary institutions, especially teachers, to engage in better teaching and learning modalities that would improve the quality of graduates produced by higher institutions in Nigeria.
The acting president, who disclosed this on Monday at the Ife Summer Institute convened by a Professor of African and African-American Studies at Harvard University, Prof. Jacob Kehinde Olupona, at the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Osun State, to stimulate researches and intellectual discourse that would solve the contemporary challenges facing the nation.
While lauding Olupona’s establishment of an Institute for Advanced Studies in OAU, Osinbajo, who was represented by his Economic Adviser, Dr. Adeyemi Dipeolu, said that the institute would assist in solving challenges that lecturers battle and also contribute to global research and international discourse.
“The establishment of the Institute of Advanced Studies in OAU is a laudable one and this will contribute to global research and international discourse. I want to urge stakeholders in the nation’s education sector to contribute to our collective efforts of bringing Nigeria’s tertiary institutions back to its pride of place. I task you (stakeholders) to develop intellectual discourse and stimulate researches that would improve our higher institutions and also deepen our education in our country,” he said.
Also speaking, the initiator of the Institute of Advanced Studies, Prof. Olupona, explained that the programme was designed to help scholars and lecturers alike to imbibe in the right work ethics that would propel robust relationships with their students and management of their institutions.
According to Olupona, the institute would train young scholars in the academia and would have the opportunity of interacting with senior scholars from all over the globe that would mentor and expose them to the “dignity of education in Nigeria.”
“This institute of Advanced Studies will be of global and international standard. It entails bringing together young fellows; those who are about to finish their doctorate- predoctoral fellows- and those who have finished their doctorate – postdoctoral fellows – and they will be trained and assured by a group of national and international scholars.
” We have identified areas of weaknesses of lecturers in teaching, research and other areas of their profession and they are going to interact with senior scholars. We want to bring back the old days and bring about the atmosphere that make teaching and learning possible and easy. We want to restore the dignity of education in Nigeria,” he said.
He advised lecturers against underrating the capacity, capability and brilliance of their students, saying that was part of the identified weaknesses of lecturers in tertiary institutions.
Olupona stressed that every stakeholder, including lecturers, students, parents and government, was responsible for the decay and decadence in the nation’s education sector.
He said that everybody would have to come together to solve the problems.
In his remarks, the Ooni of Ife, Oba Enitan Ogunwusi, hailed Olupona for the initiative and called on the Federal Government to support and ensure that the institute thrived.
