By our Senior Editor
Since his venturing into education funding about 15 years ago, with the establishment of Afe Babalola University, Ado-Ekiti, (ABUAD), the educational landscape in Nigeria has been literarily held in awesome proportion.
His University, now known globally as one of the few best in African continent, and unarguably the best in Nigeria as of today, eminent lawyer, leading Nigerian farmer, highest tax payer in Ekiti State, and largest employer of labour in Ekiti State, Aare Afe Babalola has totally changed the face, and history of education in Nigeria like a sword of dadabus, and consequent upon this, education history has never remained same.
He came into the system, like a dot of water in a vast arid desert, introducing innovations and ideas that have for long been abandoned by successive leaders/governments, as well as institutions, thereby overtaking those that his University met on ground.
To Afe Babalola, nothing is impossible. So, bringing his magic wand to bear, at his University, which is now performing “magic”, is never misplaced.
That is why today, one statement that is commonly attributed to him is, “impossibility made possible”.
Lending credence to these claims, Mr Tunde Olofintila, the ABUAD Director of Public Affairs, said Aare Afe Babalola remains different things to different people.
According to him, when the elder statesman, came up with his dual dream of establishing a university that would teach Nigerians, how a university, properly so-called, should be run, and of institutionalising quality and functional education, some skeptics would probably have looked at the now flourishing dream with some subdued optimism: some ‘let’s wait and see attitude’.
He said today, the 15-year-old university, ranked by the highly respected UK-based Times Higher Education Impact Rankings Number 1 University in Nigeria for two consecutive years, (2022 & 2023) and Number 221 in the world, in 2023”, has continued to blaze the trail in the provision of qualitative and functional education as demonstrated by its performance at the November 2023 Bar Examination.
This became manifest again when the Law Graduates of the 15-years-old university recorded a 94% pass rate and carted home 21 First Class and 69 Second Class Upper Division in the said November 2023 Bar Examination, thereby giving vent and verve to NUC’s endorsement of the University’s College of Law as the “Best College of Law in West Africa.
”This remarkable improvement over the 2018 performance of ABUAD Law Graduate when they recorded 12 First Class and 65 Second Class Upper Division is a testament to the quality of educational training the Law Graduates received, during their undergraduate studies in ABUAD, under the watchful eyes of the ever hardworking Vice Chancellor, Prof. Smaranda Olarinde, the fatherly Provost College of Law, Prof. Tunde Yebisi, the ever-supportive Head of Department of Private and Business Law, Dr. Ife Bamidele and the highly cerebral Head of Department of Public and International Law, Dr. Nnamdi Ikpeze.
The superlative performance by ABUAD Law graduates, in an examination, moderated by outsiders, is a further confirmation of the recent ranking of the University by the highly respected UK-based Times Higher Education Impact Rankings and the earlier acknowledgments by national and international education stakeholders.
The feat by the Law Graduates, who were called to the Nigeria Bar last week, came just about a month after the same University, recorded a100% Pass Rate in the MBBS Examination, where all the 161 Medical Students, passed with 12 of the scoring Distinctions, in various Medical Specialties.
The Star of the 2023 set of Medical Students who were Inducted, at an elaborate ceremony, on February 9, 2024, was Dr, Ernest Chukwuma, who apart from emerging the Overall Best Graduating Medical Student, recorded five distinctions, in Medical specialties: namely Anatomy, Physiology, Biochemistry, Integrated Medical Courses and Pathology.
In the words of Olofintila, ABUAD’s match to stardom, started very early after its establishment, when the NUC, acknowledged the university as a “model, a benchmark, and a reference point for other universities”, as well as the “pride of university education in Nigeria”.
This was followed by AVCNU, which dubbed the then bourgeoning university as “the most successful Private University in Nigeria”.
On its part, UNESCO, endorsed it as “a world class institution of Higher Education”.
The ranking of ABUAD, as the Best University in Nigeria, for two consecutive years, is neither a flash in the pan nor a fluke.
Although the university is barely 15 years old, the huge steps it has already taken, the monumental achievements it has already recorded, as well as the rich and luxuriant encomium, already showered on the university, bear an eloquent testimony to the towering and intimidating profile of l the 21st Century university, situated in the heartland of Ado-Ekiti, South-West, Nigeria.
ABUAD, the first private university in Nigeria to take off on its permanent site , with all human and material resources on ground, is not only applauded outside the shores of Nigeria, but it has also been celebrated by both national and international education stakeholders, including the National Universities Commission, NUC, the Regulatory Authority for University Education in Nigeria, the Association of Vice Chancellors of Nigerian Universities, AVCNU, and UNESCO.
All these accolades have been further confirmed by the three partnerships the university, consummated in 2023, with John Hopkins Hospital, USA, for Elective Clinical Training in the United States, the Memorandum of Understanding with King’s College, University of London, towards the establishment of the Afe Babalola African Centre for Transnational Education, for which Babalola donated the sum of £10million in 2023 , and the Memorandum of Understanding between ABUAD and Trinity Western University, TWU, Canada.
No wonder, Scott Royster, an American Admirer, who had visited many universities across 10 countries in Africa, said of ABUAD: “As I toured your university yesterday, I knew this time would be different.
” Every person I met, every building I saw, every hectare I covered, made me feel smaller and smaller.
” What you have built is that important, that big, that good. I commend you”.
Indeed, the university has overshot its expectations in the first 15 years of its existence. And this is just the beginning.
With the way things are going, particularly with the continuous injection of funds into the system by Babalola, the Founder & Chancellor, a man who is perpetually in a hurry, better days are ahead.
About the Author
