Dr. Lalla Aicha Ben Barka, the Assistant Director-General of UNESCO, who gave the convocation lecture, added the international flavor to the flurry of activities surrounding ABUAD’s 1st Convocation with torrents of accolades on the four-year old model modern university.
In her lecture titled “Tertiary Education and Developlent in Africa by and post 2015”, Ben Barka commended the significant economic progress Nigeria has made over the last 50 years, a development which she said has contributed to the availability of highly qualified human resources coming mainly from national institutions of higher learning as a result of which Nigeria has the highest number of Ph.D’s and Engineers in Africa as well as graduates from technical and vocational training institutions.
And for ABUAD, the UNESCO chieftain was full of applause for the university because according to her, UNESCO views ABUAD and other high profile institutions like it as key partners that must be considered in finding solutions not only to education but all development sectors, particularly as they contribute significantly to the need to produce highly qualified graduates who can respond to the demand of the labour market, globalization and the construction of peaceful societies.
Enraptured by the level of development on ground, the quality of academic and non-academic staff, Dr. Ben Barka enthusiastically pronounced that UNESCO would strengthen its partnership and collaboration with the university which has been described as the fastest growing in Africa.
Specifically, she said UNESCO office in Abuja and headquarters are ready to develop this partnership on key thematic areas and for this to quickly concretize, the Regional Director in Abuja, Prof. Hassana Alidou, will continue the discussion with ABUAD in order to elaborate a concrete partnership agreement.
She appreciated and congratulated Babalola, the faculty, staff and students from ABUAD, for their immeasurable and unquantifiable contributions to improving access and quality of higher education in Nigeria, ECOWAS Region and Africa, stressing that the good practices that Babalola has promoted in the area of governance and quality assurance in all areas can be shared with other universities in Nigeria, in Africa and the rest of the world.
The UNESCO boss reaffirmed that the world body, through its various intervention on Higher Education in Africa, would extend its support to ABUAD and encourage for closer partnership.
Unable to contain her admiration for the university, Dr. Ben Barka said UNESCO would help in advertising the modern model university to the world because in her view, it would appear the university, its activities and achievements has not enjoyed the advertisement and publicity it richly deserves. This, indeed, is another recognition, another endorsement, another acknowledgment from a respected world organization as high as the UNESCO. For ABUAD, surely, the best is yet to come.