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Soyinka, Okebukola decry state of
education in Africa
By Tom Chiahemen
senior
correspondent,
Abuja
The World Conference on Higher Education,
ended in Barcelona, Spain, with experts concluding that Africa still remained
behind in many of the indicators and needed to fast track its higher education
delivery system.
This came after the regional reports from
delegates, including Nobel laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka and the Executive
Secretary of the National Universities Commission (NUC), Prof. Peter Okebukola,
who gave insight into the progress made and the challenges in the areas of
access, quality, management, equity and funding of education.
Soyinka and Okebukola were among the 520
delegates from 28 countries that attended the World Conference on Higher
Education with the theme: “The Social Commitment of Universities in the
21st Century.”
Two Vice-Chancellors from Nigeria, 28
Vice-Chancellors from other African countries and several Ministers of
Education and development partners with interest in higher education, were also
in attendance, according to the NUC Scribe who has since returned to Abuja.
While stressing the need for the continent
to fast track its higher education delivery system using the New Partnership
for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) as a rallying point and as a platform
for showing its social commitment to African peoples, participants at the
Conference also saw the use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT)
as a mechanism with which Africa could accelerate its participation rate in
higher education.
Prof. Soyinka, who made a presentation
entitled “What can universities do for their social commitment,”
identified inequities in university education across the world that needed to
be addressed. He also stressed the need for university operators to show a greater
degree of relevance to the societies they serve.
The presentations converged in defining
such as roles as the Development of high level human power; mobilization of the
citizenry to fight corruption and produce graduates that would sanitize the larger
society against the ills of corruption; implementation of programmes that would
lead to poverty reduction, wealth creation and job creation and; engendering in
students, a commitment to service.
Other defined roles included the Production
of entrepreneurial graduates and who are vectors of modernization; Leadership
training and training of student in good governance and good business practice;
Promotion of social responsibilities of students; Promotion of inter-cultural
and inter-scientific dialogue; Research into indigenous knowledge systems;
Engendering sound ethical behaviours in students and; Responding to needs of
the society in terms of knowledge creation, cultural, social, economic and
political development.
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