PRESS RELEASE
The UNESCO Regional Office, Abuja has congratulated Afe Babalola University, Ado-Ekiti (ABUAD) and its Founder, Aare Afe Babalola, SAN, for being the first university to host to its annual retreat at no cost to the world body.
Speaking at the commencement of the four-day UNESCO retreat in the university yesterday, the Director of UNESCO’s Regional Office, Abuja, Prof. Hassana Alidou, said the quantum of development and many other achievements recorded within a short period of the university’s existence are due to the vision and mission statement articulated in ABUAD founding document, Babalola’s dedication and the highly qualified faculty and administrators as well as highly motivated parents and students.
According to Halidou, “these are aspects of quality assurance that characterized a first tier university not only in Nigeria, but in America, Europe and Asia and we saw it developing in ABUAD. ABUAD is a model higher education institution which we are proud of and happy to be connected with for a long time”.
She added: “We are, therefore, in ABUAD not only to visit or hold our retreat and go back to Abuja. We see this as a launchpad for increased partnerships in research and innovation into what works and good practices that we can scale up in the region. We are here to see how the UNESCO Chairs in Peace and Citizenship Education; and the other one on Entrepreneurship Education and Agriculture for Sustainable Development have progressed. We are here to explore options in sciences, culture, communication and education which we can use in our initiatives for the region.
“We are here because of the extraordinary and significant achievements of a humanitarian and philanthropist Aare Afe Babalola. A Nigerian, African and global citizen who put his wisdom, knowledge, competence and wealth to the benefit of humankind by building a world class institution of higher education whose reputation has gone beyond Nigeria’s borders and has welcome excellent faculty, researchers from Nigeria, Europe and America. And students from all over the world are attending ABUAD because of its high quality programme recognized by national and international accreditation bodies”.
Alidou also congratulated ABUAD for ensuring that its students do not miss any quality learning time as a result of which they are able to graduate on time in a country where students in public universities spend between seven and eight years for four years academic programmes due to the prevalence of strike actions by the various workers unions.
The historic three-day Retreat which saw the Executive Vice Chairman of Julius Berger, Nigeria, Mr. Heinz Stockhausen and the Deputy Director-General of IITA, Prof. Kenton Danshiell, presenting papers focused at implementing the following strategies:
• Validate the UNESCO Regional Programme within the eight countries (Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana, Guinea, Liberia, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Togo) in the Region for 2014 and 2015;
• Validate UNESCO strategy to enhance its visibility and knowledge management; and
• Formulate UNESCO strategy for resources mobilization
The retreat is coming some three months after the university successfully played host to the 129-member strong Association of Vice Chancellors of Nigerian Universities (AVCNU) in June, thus becoming the first private university and the youngest (at barely four years of its existence) to play host to the Association’s meeting since its inception in 1969.
Signed
Tunde Olofintila
Head, Public Relations.