The leader of the Senate, Senator Opeyemi Bamidele, has called on governments at all levels, corporate organiaations and philanthropists to invest more strategically in education to produce global billionaires and brands.
Bamidele, currently representing Ekiti Central, highlighted how developed and emerging nations in Asia, Europe and North America leveraged education as a veritable tool of socio-economic transformation to attain their national aspirations.
He made the call after receiving a Doctor of Law (Honoris Causa) from Ekiti State University (EKSU) during its 29th convocation ceremony held at the weekend in Ado Ekiti, Ekiti State.
Bamidele received the honour yesterday alongside the chairman, Federal Inland Revenue Service, Dr. Zacch Adedeji and Chairman, Governing Board, Bank of Industry, Dr. Mansur Muhtar, thus making it the third honorary doctorate he had received between January 2003 and March 2025.
In his address at the convocation, Bamidele emphasised the significance of education for the socio-economic transformation of nations worldwide, which according to him, had deployed to attain their development goals and conquer their heinous challenges.
He specifically observed, “When I talk about quality education, I mean the kind of education that liberates minds; that meaningfully transforms generations and that unlocks doors to limitless opportunities across all sectors.
“In this sense, education is a veritable tool that all developed and emerging countries the world over have leveraged to get to where they are today. This tool is equally available to us as a people in the pursuit of our national aspiration.”
To realise significant socio-economic development across all sectors, however, Bamidele noted that this required “providing not only an enabling environment, but also a highly competitive one for our nation to be globally competitive.
“It also entails purposeful public investments in our younger generations, and we act now. It, no doubt, demands sustained and strategic support from private interests across all sectors that produce the global brands and billionaires.
“This is the credible template that produced Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX and Tesla; Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon Inc; Mark Zuckerberg, co-founder of FaceBook and Instagram; Larry Page, CEO of Google; Warren Buffet, the owner of Berkshire Hathaway Inc and several others.
“It is now time for us all to leverage the tool of quality education to produce our own global billionaires and brands. But we cannot achieve it by accident or by chance, but by strategic planning and aggressive pursuit of those plans.
“We may not achieve it without redefining our national priority and investing meaningfully in people. In essence, education that liberates minds is the only answer to our desired ends. And the earlier we start investing more strategically in our people, the better for us as a federation,” he said.
Bamidele, therefore, challenged public and private actors to return to the drawing board; reflect on this message and recommit ourselves to the task of investing more meaningfully in people. This message should be a significant part of our takeaways from this historic convocation.
In his address, the vice-chancellor of the university, Prof. Ayodele Joseph enumerated projects, which Bamidele facilitated for the institution to include construction of male and female hostels for medical students, mini stadium and the construction of an FM Radio station.
