Afe Babalola University, Ado Ekiti: a Model Institution worthy of emulation.

-Professor Henry Akintunde

A US-based don, a Professor of Economics, Prof. Henry Akintunde, has in an interview, conducted by Kehinde Ojo of the Tribune Newspaper, in the weekend, Sunday, August 21, 2011, described Afe Babalola University as: a model institution worthy of emulation.

Prof. Akintunde who spoke on the state of education in Nigeria said, “Corruption has crept into the system from the elementary school to the tertiary level. This corruption is also affecting the approval of universities and accreditation of their programmes. I have observed that universities’ academic programmes are accredited where they should not, and were denied where they should”.

According to him, “there are mushroom schools all over the places in the country; tertiary institutions are not left out either. These schools turn out graduates in their thousands annually to the labour market. The implication of this to the economy is that in the next 10 to 15 years, there will be many unskilled graduates dominating the labour market in the country. This implies that if Nigeria will have to depend on this labour force to increase its productivity, growth and development will suffer stagnation”.

The Professor of Economics, therefore disclosed that, “Afe Babalola University is one of the few institutions in the country that are making efforts to resuscitate quality education, considering the infrastructure and research facilities development going on in the university, more so the support coming from some foreign universities to the institution because of the proprietor’s influence, is adding value to the institution”.