Don seeks value-oriented learning for economic growth

The need for the development of framework in tertiary institutions, which would ensure sustainability of academics, gender and economic development has been reiterated.

Professor of Economics, who just retired from the services of Olabisi Onabanjo University, Ogun State, Adenike Osoba, said the development of seasoned academics has become imperative, as education remains the bedrock of nation building.

The don, who made the call at a valedictory session and book launch in her honour in Ijebu-Ode, Ogun State, said though it has been exciting working in an environment dominated by the male folk, it has also not been so easy.
“It has been with doggedness and determination that I have survived in the midst of men. Through my career years, I have contributed in raising seasoned lecturers, even at doctorate degree level,” she said.

According to her, there are, in both undergraduate and postgraduate levels, those whose development cast a shadow of the desirable, hence the need to support initiatives aimed at raising the knowledge base, especially for lecturers, to avoid certificate-induced rationalisation.

Vice chancellor of the institution, Prof Saburi Adejimi Adesanya, described Osoba as a rare gem, who just emerged when her services were critically needed and has made immense contribut ions to tackling the challenges she met.
Describing her as a mediator, who also discharged well, all her assigned roles, Adesanya lamented that the university community would miss her as “she is not the person we would have loved to retire.”

The retired professor, who was the only female graduate of Economics in 1967 at the University of Lagos, also became the first female doctorate holder in Economics from the University of Ibadan.

Her career spanned from the National Manpower Board of the Federal Ministry of Economic Development in 1967, Lagos; Nigeria Institute of Social and Economic Research, Ibadan; Texas Tech University, Lubbock, United States; and Olabisi Onabanjo University, Ago-Iwoye, Ogun State.

Listed as a distinguished person in the Dictionary of International Biography, Cambridge, 1987, she is also life member of the Nigerian Economic Society and member, Nigerian Institute of Management.

Commenting on Nigeria’s economy on the sidelines of the event in an interview with The Guardian, she said, “In Nigeria at the moment, the industrial sector especially the manufacturing sector is producing at low capacity and not producing the things that we need, while those produced are not competitive and that makes us lag behind in the comity of nations.
“The public sector investment is even worse. If you put these two sectors side by side, you will see that the public sector is not profitable and this is the question we will continue to ask. But the answer is about knowledge.
“We need to go back to agriculture sector, rediscover backward integration scheme, because if we cannot produce our raw materials locally and continue to import them all, we can not produce competitively,” she said.