By Rotimi Ojomoyela
ADO-EKITI — THE founder of Afe Babalola University Ado-Ekiti, Aare Afe Babalola has identified inadequate funding and obsolete curricular as the major problem confronting engineering education in the country.
The elder statesman said this, at the weekend, while delivering a lecture on ‘Funding of Engineering Education and Training for Self Reliance’, at the maiden edition of Ademola Olorunfemi annual lecture at the International Culture and Event Centre (The Dome) Akure, Ondo State.
Babalola, who called on the Federal Government to show more commitment to funding engineering education, said: “It is a notorious fact that engineering education, like others, is not well funded either by Federal or State Governments.
“This is in large measure due to the attitude of the government and its people to education. The government since 1948 has made people to believe unwittingly that it can provide free education whereas education is a very expensive enterprise.”
He said: “If the government expects its citizens to be honest, the government must also be honest in its dealings.
“It should be honest enough to inform citizens that quality and functional education is very expensive.
“It should be honest enough to review its policy on funding of education at all levels. The politicians must refrain from campaigning for votes based on impossible promises of free education.
“It remains incontrovertible that apart from the late Premier of Western Region, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, who devoted 57% of the resources of Western Region to funding education, no government in this country, Federal or state, has come anything close to that feat.”
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