Excellent interview regarding Babcock University, Nigeria

[Key Guy]

From Punch Online, Nigeria Digital Newspaper (recommended reading)

http://www.punchng.com/Articl.aspx?theartic=Art200905032563618

Quote:

The President/ Vice-Chancellor, Babcock University , Ilisan-Remo, Ogun State , Prof. Kayode Makinde, in this interview with SEGUN OLUGBILE, spoke on the impact of private universities in the country, why the institution does not award pass degrees, the achievement of the 10-year-old institution and why the rebranding policy of the present government may be fruitless

The Babcock University turns 10 this year, how has the journey been so far? There is no way one will talk about Babcock University , an inspirational university, that one will not talk about the establishment of the Seventh Day Adventist Missionary Institute for West Africa which started in 1959. You will recall that Nigeria a as a nation did not have any university then, and the only one that had a semblance of a university was just a college, the University College, Ibadan, affiliated to the University of London. Coupled with this was the fact that the nation was preparing for self governance and the leadership of the SDA knew that the nation would need highly educated people to drive the new nation, that was why the church applied to the Bureau of Lands in Abeokuta or Ibadan , for the establishment of a university. You can go to Ibadan or Abeokuta to verify this claim. In fact at the ground breaking ceremony, the late Premier of the defunct Western Nigeria, Chief Obafemi Awolowo led the team which included the regional Minister for Education, Hon. Okusaga to perform the turning of the sod on this campus in 1959.

So the leadership of the church was thinking ahead of the nation. The founding fathers knew that the young nation would need well educated leaders to grow the nation and this crop of leaders would need quality education, training and mentoring. That was why the church applied for a university but unfortunately the political class did not grant this request, rather they granted us the licence to create a missionary institute. Also, the National Universities Commission that was supposed to midwife the establishment of such universities was not established until 1962/1963 and I think that was the beginning of our problem as a nation. Because government ought to have allowed the private sector participation in the nation‘s university system from the beginning. Government should not have monopolised the sector from the beginning, it should have allowed us to start. For me, government has no business in a lot of things it involved itself in

(much more online)