MOCPED-UI Matriculation: UI VC Charges Students To Stay Committed To Education

Acting Vice-Chancellor of the University of Ibadan, UI, Professor AB Ekanola

By Babatunde Kaka

The University Of Ibadan VC charges MOCPED-UI matriculating students to say committed to education
Commends the National Assembly on Constitution Review.

Ekohotblog reports that the Acting Vice-Chancellor of the University of Ibadan, UI, Professor AB Ekanola, has urged students to contribute immensely towards the restructuring of Nigeria through academic dexterity.

Ekanola who was represented by the Director, Directorate of Affiliated institutions, Prof MK Akinsola, disclosed this while he was speaking at Michael Otedola College of Primary Education, MOCPED-UI, Noforija, Epe, at the 5th Matriculation Ceremony for the institution’s 100 Level/Direct entry of the 2020/2021 academic session at the College multipurpose hall.

“You can only be part of this dream for change and a better Nigeria, if you thrive seriously in your studies and if you are rigorous in your learning. Bear in mind that our society is gradually becoming unfriendly towards academic studies and rigorous learning due to the ‘get rich quick’ syndrome’ which is gradually becoming the philosophy of some today. On the contrary, you are encouraged to value education and acquire it, since that is your best way to partake and participate in the discourse of restructuring and re-inventing Nigeria and the world at large,” the academician said.

“Education, therefore, becomes your own unique way of contributing to the restructuring of our nation by making our society a theatre for rigorous academic commitment. This enviable goal can however not be achieved without the required and accompanying discipline. These include the virtues of integrity, honesty, obedience, patience and temperance. Integrity stands above and behind every honourable endeavour. As you conduct yourself in integrity, it must be in accord with excellence, the hallmark of our University and Michael Otedola College of Primary Education, with whom we have enjoyed a wonderful relationship,” he stated.

He further disclosed that the ceremony was delayed due to the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) strike action which was suspended on 24th December 2021.

Also responsible for the delay, he said was the devastation of the global pandemic which not only affected families, governments, nations but also caused a major setback in the Institution’s calendar, forcing it to shut down.

Earlier in his speech, he explore the Nigerian situation under the theme, Nigeria Today and The 1999 Constitution, where he commended the two-day National Public hearing on the review of the 1999 constitution which was conducted recently as a great step towards national integration and development.

He said, “I do not think crucial changes required for national coherence, equity, justice, fair play and cohesion should have taken so long a time to be reviewed. It clearly means either we have not been progressing or learning or something is exceedingly wrong somewhere.

I suspect, for us to have been so passive, subservient and even dominated by some dictatorial document, particularly established to suit the epochal exigencies and existential necessities, even of a military regime, to which we have been brainwashed or beguiled in surrendering individual and collective goals and destinies, a lot indeed must certainly be wrong.

That is why Nigeria is where it is today: Kidnappings, killings, criminality, banditry, venality, and all sorts of unimaginable acts and actions, extreme devoid of good reasoning. I am fully persuaded that the deafening clamour of ‘restructure Nigeria’ has come from an honest, sincere and legitimate cause and out of the unshakeable conviction and impression of “bending history,” he avered.

Citing the former president of The United Staes of America, Barrack Obama, who said that every ‘Promise Land’ has to essentially bend history in some way or the other which for him to emerge, the erudite Professor disclosed that the hallmarks of bending history the way for people to become advocates and ambassadors of equality, tolerance and opportunities in all ramifications.

He warned that the potential review of the 1999 constitution should not be a “mimetic action” which could mean a game-mechanism of politicking, stating that the changes made and enacted in 1999 may have led to many national problems bedevilling the nation which questions Nigeria’s existence and unity such as insecurity, banditry, kidnappings, corruption, religious intolerance, ethnicity to mention a few.

Paul Mbagwu