The Executive Secretary, National Universities Commission (NUC), Professor Abubakar Adamu Rasheed, has sadly pointed out that Tertiary Education Institutions (TEls) in Nigeria are yet to be the incubators of national unity.
Even as he stated that social instability in Nigeria has a history of bad governance and government’s insensitive to the living conditions of the citizenry.
Professor Rasheed stated these on Monday, while delivering the 4th convocation lecture of Alex Ekwueme Federal University Ndufu Alike Ikwo, Ebonyi state, with the theme: ” The Role of The Academia in Nation-building And National Integration in Nigeria.”
Rasheed who currently serves as the National Co-ordinator of the Project Steering Committee of the World Bank supported African Centers of Excellence in selected Nigerian Universities, reiterated that for Nigeria to promote social cohesion, the nation’s academia must promote literacy and good governance, aimed at alleviating poverty through job creation and research innovations that would positively impact on the well-being of the people.
He maintained that: “for Nigeria to unlock it’s potential and take its rightful place in the comity of nation’s, the country must rise above all the parochial, sectional and retrogressive forces that have worked against its unity and nationhood.
“… We must begin to act and fine tune this tool for the good of our nation. Our institutions must be models of national complexity and unity. We would be able to tell the whole nation that we are serious in this enterprise of nation-building, when an Igbo person or Yoruba person is elected as Vice- Chancellor in a federal University in the North, based purely on merit.
“We shall also believe that we have arrived as a nation when Hausa or Fulani man is elected as a Vice Chancellor of a federal University in the South East or the South West, purely on merit. Achieving that will not only be a barometer for us, but how we achieve it will definitely usher in the dawn of our true integration as a nation.”
Further on the way forward, he suggested the academia must engage in Education for Social Cohesion, promote Good Citizenry, facilitate students’ appreciation of the complexity of issues related to historical and global current events.
The NUC Executive Secretary, also noted that institutions of higher learning in the country have attained massive, remarkable and laudable success in the area of human capacity development. “But that is only a part and not a whole part of the historic mission of tertiary education in Nigeria. The 1959 Ashby Report, which laid the groundwork for the expansion of Universities in Nigeria, envisioned a broader role for academia in Nigeria.
“For Lord Ashby, tertiary education, apart from creating the manpower needs of an emerging independent country, has the more enduring purposes of creating a national elite, engendering development and promoting unity and nation-building.
The report gave birth to the demerging of the University College, Ibadan, from the University of London, to become an autonomous University of Ibadan, and the emergence of new Universities in Nsukka (1960), Lagos, Ife, Zaria (all in 1962).
” Can we, honestly, say that we have achieved these three broad missions? The answer is that we have succeeded in only one out of three, and in my little knowledge of mathematics, we have failed,” he added.
Earlier, the Vice Chancellor of AE-FUNAI, Professor Chinedum Nwajiuba, thanked Professor Rasheed for his sacrifice to get to the school on time despite his busy schedule, assuring him that the university won’t take the sacrifice for granted.
He said that the title proposed for this year’s lecture, subject to the modification of the guest lecturer was ” In Brotherhood We Stand: Role of Academia in National Unity,” taken from the lines of President Muhammadu Buhari’s remark of February 27, 2019.
Buhari had urged Nigerians to stand in brotherhood if the country must achieve a bright and fulfilling future. “As stated, the title was subject to modification and the guest lecturer has done so as you can see”, Nwajiuba pointed out.
He called on Nigerians to return to the values they hold dear, including brotherhood, unity and faith, standing with and for each other, accommodation and common goal as well as the well-being of all citizens.
“This conviction is also reflected in the choice of the only honorary doctorate degree we shall be conferring tomorrow and that will go posthumous, to the late Philip Effiong. Those familiar with the history of our country will easily remember the role of Effiong at a critical moment in Nigerian history” he noted.
