Kunle Adelabu
The former Minister for Works, Sen. (Otunba) Dr. Adeseye Ogunlewe, has warned of a serious consequence if the country’s Universities are unable to admit a larger percentage of qualified students every year.
Ogunlewe, who was a former Pro – Chancellor, Federal University of Agriculture (FUNAAB), Abeokuta, also charged that Nigeria must take advantage of its population and land, if the country wants to be socially and economically developed.
The former Minister spoke at the second edition of Oba Adewamiri Ayokulehin Olaide Memorial & Prince Kayode Olaide Annual Scholarship Schemes for academic performances in Keme Junior and Senior Colleges, Ibeshe, Ikorodu Division, Lagos State, Southwest, Nigeria, for 2022 academic session, last Thursday.
He was honoured at the ceremony by the sponsor for providing him with a scholarship award that helped him pursued his academics and for his general contributions to educational developments.
“Nigeria will fall apart if we are not careful. We have two comparative advantages that we must utilize immediately. One, our landmass; we have 34milion square meters of land and two, our population; we have over 200 million people in population. China, India, Brazil, Russia are using their capacity in this regard”, he said.
“Students who applied for JAMB are 1.6million, and the Nigeria government has space for only 300, 000, so, annually, we leave 1.2milion students outside the University and those are the people who will destroy all the infrastructures that we are building now. An uneducated child is worse than an animal because he thinks like an animal and is ready to destroy.
“Out of the 1.6million that applied for JAMB, 350, 000 wanted to read Medicine and I told my boss that if we can train 350, 000 doctors every year, there will be no nation in the world that will be able to compete with Nigeria. They would require them in every part of the world and we would deploy them to every nation. That is how to bring money to the country”, he said.
“Out of these 1.6million, 300, 000 applied to read Engineering –Mechanical, Civil, ICT Innovations etc. If we train and graduate 300, 000 Engineers every year , this country will be great. That was what China and India did. After their education, they usually gathered them together in groups to form companies and they started to develop their nation.
“India gets 86billion dollars on diaspora remittance every year, we only get 20billion and with our population, we can get 160billion dollars. We don’t need oil and gas. God has endowed us with skills, brains and the population. Why are we not using them?
Sen. Ogunlewe, who is the Chairman, Ikorodu Division Resource Development Group, a body which has been advancing the educational development and human resource in the division, said that the experience of the last general elections where youths mobilized against his own party is a sign of what to come if the situation is not addressed.
“A nation with the level of population that we have, and without educating them, is preparing for revolution, and it happened during the last elections. Our youths were against us. They were unhappy with us because we didn’t care for them”, he said.
“I warned my colleagues that this is just a test case. All of us will run away in 2027 if we fail to act.
“From Lagos State, 270, 000 students applied for JAMB, but the total allocation that Lagos can provide is only 15, 000, how many students are we losing to every year, what do you think that they are going to do for us, if not to hate us? They are going to be displeased and fight us and we would be handicapped because we have not treated them well.
“It is a trying time for our nation; for these children. Can we imagine them sweating to pass WAEC and JAMB and at the end, there is nowhere to go and nobody to assist them.
“I receive a lot of requests from them to assist them with letters to get admission. Do we need to get letters to get students admitted in our country? What about students that have no access to someone like me, what will happen to them”, he asked rhetorically.
