Vice chancellor of Afe Babalola University, Ado-Ekiti (ABUAD) Professor Smaranda Olarinde has urged stakeholders to renew their commitments to the nation’s ducation sector to ensure its development.
Olarinde who stressed the need for all higher institutions of learning in the country to scale up their academic activities towards ensuring the production of quality graduates.
She spoke at the 15th matriculation ceremony of the university in Ado Ekiti, the Ekiti state capital.
The university registrar and secretary to the governing council, Lady Christie Oluborode, administered the matriculation oath on the 1,961 students admitted for 2023/2024 session across the six colleges of the school.
Olarinde said, “At ABUAD we do not produce regular graduates. In a country where mediocrity, failure, corruption, poverty and excuse for backwardness is fast becoming the norm, it is a disservice for any higher educational institution, as endowed as we are, to produce the regular kind of graduates.
“Our role in the educational sector in the country and in Africa is to transform the entire educational system. You do not transform something by doing everything the usual and the common way. You transform something by doing things the excellent and the uncommon way.
“Definitely not when the philosophical construct of our existence as a university was founded on the life and vision of a living legend, one of the greatest examples of humanity ever to grace this continent our own Founder, Funder, President and Chancellor, Aare Afe Emmanuel Babalola, the Baamofin of Yoruba land!”
The VC who noted that the institution commenced academic operations approximated 14 years ago said, “In those short 14 years, we rose from as it were nothing, to being ranked by a global body, the Times Higher Education Impact Ranking as Number 1 in Nigeria for two consecutive years (2022 and 2023), and Number 221 in the world. We literally have hundreds of universities in Nigeria and thousands in the world.’’
