Shortly after breakfast tomorrow (May 22), another colourful feather will be added to the already well adorned cap of the Elder Statesman, Farmer and Educationist, Aare Afe Babalola, SAN, when Adeyemi College of Education, Ondo will present him with its Distinguished Fellowship Award for his remarkable works as an educationist and as part of the activities marking the College’s Golden Jubilee.

The College has rolled out the drums since Monday (May 19) to celebrate 50 years of its existence and its 33rd Convocation ceremony which grand finale comes up tomorrow.

This Award is coming 22 days after the Forum for International Green Sustainability (FIGS) crowned the multiple Chief and many-sided man as the Africa Man of the Year in Food Security 2004 for his exploits in  food security, job creation as well as the monumental investment he has made over the years into his ABUAD Enterprise Farm.

FIGS is a  Non-Profit organization with Tax Exempt Status in the United Kingdom with the mandate to bridge the widening gap of extreme hunger and poverty in every home in Africa, one crop at a time. It was inaugurated in Nigeria as a Regional Chapter in Abuja in 2006 with 52 mentors and over 1,000 Volunteers in the six geo-political zones of the country.

The erroneous perception of farming being old fashioned has become the anchor of FIGS global campaign while championing the cause of youth inclusiveness in sustainable Agriculture, capacity building amongst farmers, stakeholders and Green initiatives and Food Security in over 23 Countries including Sub -regional Africa.

Babalola whose formal education ended at Emmanuel Primary School, Ado-Ekiti, where he obtained his Standard Six Certificate because of paucity of funds for him to go further in those early days, went on life with an unbending determination and by dint of hard work to obtain two Bachelors’ degrees (B. Sc. Economics and LL.B) by private study.

Since then, Babalola, who was at various times a Pupil Teacher, a Secondary School Teacher, Vice Principal, University Lecturer, Economist, auditor, Administrator, Farmer and Educationist, has been so many things within the country’s educational landscape, so much so that he is a former winner of the Senior Teachers of Nigeria Award by Association of Nigeria Teachers.

The unflinching contributions of Babalola, a man who has built and donated towering edifices to many tertiary institutions in Nigeria, started with his patently selfless wavering of a 5 million British Pound Sterling legal fee in 1982 just for a federal institution to be established in his home state of the bigger Ondo State then.

It was this altruistic and patriotic gesture that gave birth to the Federal Polytechnic, which was first sited in Akure before it was relocated to Ado-Ekiti, Babalola’s homestead, when the Federal University of Technology took off in Akure. It is on record that as Chairman of the Federal Polytechnic, which he part funded, Babalola did not take any allowance, rather, and on a continuous basis, he kept on expending his own resources.

In 2,000, Babalola, a man bitten by the bug of excellence, was appointed Pro-Chancellor and Chairman of Council of the University of Lagos, during which time he was able to see first-hand and bare-facedly the rot and decay that characterized the nation’s educational landscape. Together with his colleagues in the Council and the University Administration, they were able to turn the fortunes of UNILAG around so much so that that university became the best around that time and he was voted Best Pro-Chancellor twice (2005 and 2006). 

But because that was not enough for him and more importantly because of the urge to change things for the better, to give education a befitting face lift and to show that it is possible to have good quality, functional and reformatory education, he established his wave-making Afe Babalola University, Ado-Ekiti (ABUAD), to lead others by example in quality, functional and reformatory education.

The University which commenced academic works on January 4, 2010, has received many accolades from eminent personalities and notable institutions within and outside Nigeria. For example, the All African Students Union with Headquarters in Ghana acknowledged the university as the “fastest growing private university in Africa”, the European Business Assembly in Oxford gave it Socrates Award for the Best Enterprise in Africa, 2011.

The university, though only four years old now has been rated by the Global University Webometric as the second (2^nd) Best Private University in Nigeria and number thirteen (13^th) of the totality of the 157 universities in Nigeria. It recently secured 100% accreditation in all the fourteen Programmes presented to NUC for accreditation in 2013. The Council for the Regulation of Engineering in Nigeria (COREN) has also accredited all the seven engineering programmes. Similarly the Computer Professionals Registration Council of Nigeria (CPN) also granted full accreditation for its computer programmes.

The Nigerian Universities Commission (NUC), the Regulatory Body for Education in Nigeria, described it as a model, benchmark and reference point, former President of Nigeria, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo described it as a model, former military leader, Dr. (Gen.) Yakubu Gowon (retd) described the setting as “superlative and impressive with nothing of its kind that I have seen so far in this country or anywhere”, President Goodluck Jonathan also described it as “Notably one of the most outstanding individual contributions towards government educational project”.

At the international level, UNESCO, which acknowledged ABUAD as one of the prestigious universities in Africa, has invited  the university to collaborate with it on issues relating to education, particularly on the Flagship Programme 2 of Operational Strategy for Priority Africa (2014-2021) titled “Strengthening Education Systems for Sustainable Development in Africa: Improving Equity, Quality and Relevance” and further volunteered “to publicize UNESCO-ABUAD initiatives on its website”, thereby ‘portraying the university as one of the shining beacon of excellence in its endeavour to be one of the best universities in African and the world’.

The university operates the collegiate system and has seven of such colleges: the College of Law, College of Natural and Applied Sciences, College of Medicine and Health Sciences, College of Engineering, College of Social and Management Sciences and College of Arts and Humanities as well as the College of Education. It also offers Entrepreneurial and Leadership training to make its graduates all-rounder human beings that do not have to wait for anybody to give them white collar jobs before they can be gainfully employed.

As leaders in functional, quality and reformatory education, the university initiated and developed programmes in Social Justice, Intelligence & Security Studies, Human Biology and Mechatronics. Today, ABUAD is the only university in Nigeria offering such programmes and NUC has gone ahead to adopt them as the benchmark for any university that may want to offer these programmes in future.

It also has a gigantic Entrepreneurial Talent Centre with 26 different sports, a rare phenomenon in any university around today and an Agricultural Enterprise Centre which has been designated by IITA as a Centre of Research where students learn many areas of Agriculture.

The Centre boasts of   110,000 Mango trees, 500,000 Teak trees, 310,000 Gmelina trees, a Moringa factory worth over N1 billion, 600 fish ponds with at least 5,000 fishes in each of them, and a        Feed Mill worth over N500,000.00 as well as an Animal section made up of a Piggery, Snailery, Turkey, Guinea Fowl, Quail and Mushroom as well as an incubator.

Today, the mustard seed that was planted four years ago has grown and blossomed into a great oak tree as the first set of our 103 students from the College of Sciences and the College of Social and Management Sciences were released to the world at a very colourful maiden convocation ceremony on October 21, last year. Testimonies abound about the respect and honour appreciative members of the society accord these ABUAD Ambassadors.

It must be in appreciation of all these national and international recognitions and encomiums that the new College of Industrial Development (UID), Ghana, appointed the four-year old university to mentor it as the ‘Mentoring Tertiary and Affiliate Institution.

Undoubtedly, ABUAD is an ‘incubator’ that would enable Babalola to ‘replicate’ himself in the ‘leaders’ of tomorrow through function. Certainly, ABUAD and its Founder are going places.