Ex
President Olusegun Obasanjo yesterday called on the Federal Government
to resolve the issue of the non-acceptance of National Open University
of Nigeria (NOUN) law graduates into the Law School.
NOUN suspended admission into its law
programme following a decision by the Council of Legal Education (CLE)
to stop law graduates from NOUN from being admitted into the Law School.
But Chief Obasanjo said the decision to
deny them admission into Law School was a serious matter that needed to
be tackled with all seriousness.
According to a statement by the
institution’s Head of Communication, Ibrahim Sheme, in Abuja yesterday,
the former President spoke when the Vice-chancellor of NOUN, Prof.
Abdalla Uba Adamu, visited him at his house in Abeokuta, the Ogun State
capital.
The former President, who last year
graduated with a degree in Theology from NOUN, said: “When they told me
about law people, I said who are the early lawyers? They sat at home and
read and they ate their dinner… And then they qualified. We know we
were there with most of them in the 1950s.”
“Whereas we have made the university
popular, we still have a sort of what I call either ignorance or
resistance. I try to explain, and I think we need to do this, people
don’t know how the Open University works. And we need to make them know
it.”
He called on the Federal Government to give more funding to NOUN to meet its objectives.
“I think we have to persuade government
to give you more. The point is that at this point in time money is
scarce, but Open University is doing much more than the world
universities is doing. I am not running down the other universities,
what I’m saying is that the opportunity that Open University offers is
much more than the opportunity that any of the world universities could
offer,” the former President said.
Commenting on Adamu’s appointment by
President Muhammadu Buhari to head NOUN, Obasanjo described him as “a
square peg in a square hole as far as our university is concerned,”
adding: “Your reputation goes along with you.”
He thanked the NOUN management for
naming the university’s newly established Good Governance and
Development Research Centre after him, saying he regarded it as an
honour.
The President accepted NOUN’s
invitation to present a lecture: “Leadership and Challenges of
Development in Nigeria: The Way Forward,” as part of activities to mark
his birthday in March.
In his remarks, Adamu expressed
appreciation to the former President for accepting the honour and
informed him of the success he has achieved since becoming head of the
largest university in the country.
Adamu described some of the steps he
took in developing the university system, including the renaming of
schools into faculties, and introducing the election of deans and Heads
of Department, as innovative.
Director of the Olusegun Obasanjo Good
Governance and Development Research Centre Prof. A.Y. Shehu, in his
speech, reminded the former President that the decision to establish the
centre and name it after him was communicated to him by the former
vice-chancellor when he visited NOUN in Lagos in October 2014.
The decision, he said, was based on the
recognition of the role Obasanjo played in creating institutions that
deepened democracy and good governance within Nigeria, Africa and the
world.
0 comments:
Post a Comment