Obasanjo tasks varsities on patriotism, national development

Former President of Nigeria, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo on Saturday tasked public and private universities to be at the vanguard in promoting patriotism and honesty.

Obasanjo held that universities have roles to play in strengthening national development through the generation of ideas and provision of data that will influence national policy formulation and implementation.

The former president while delivering the 16th convocation lecture at BOWEN University, Iwo, Osun State, titled: “Strengthening Private Universities for Greater Contributions to National Development”, noted that there was a need by universities for urgent attention on values re-orientation.

“Our universities should be the vanguard of the efforts for promoting the inculcation and sustenance of values including fear of God, honesty and love of country.”

He commended private universities for roles played in partnering with public varsities, saying, “our private universities have done fairly well so far, given their young age, and will need to be strengthened to meet the high expectations of the citizenry in the years.”

Obasanjo recommended that private universities must pay attention to human capacity development, research capacity strengthening to unveil solutions to insecurity and other challenges facing the country, good facilities and infrastructure, strengthening curriculum implementation, creativity in fund generation and management.

The Vice-Chancellor, Professor Joshua Ogunwole in his address disclosed that 1021 students graduated from the school for 2020/2021.

He noted that 90 of them bagged first-class honours.