Thursday, 28th March 2024
To guardian.ng
Search
Breaking News:

Foundation laments sector decay, moves to promote lifelong learning

By Iyabo Lawal
27 July 2017   |   2:44 am
As part of efforts to meet the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) four, which emphasizes inclusive qualitative education and lifelong learning, the Walter Ollor Foundation recently held its maiden summit to fashion out ways of actualizing this aim.

Prof Walter Ollor

As part of efforts to meet the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) four, which emphasizes inclusive qualitative education and lifelong learning, the Walter Ollor Foundation recently held its maiden summit to fashion out ways of actualizing this aim.

At the summit, which held at the Civic Centre, Lagos with the theme, “Enabling success in people and organization,” stakeholders harped on the need to have the right attitude to achieve success in life.

President of the foundation, Prof Walter Ollor explained that the discovery summit was part of efforts to achieve the SDG four.The Professor of Economics while explaining the choice of theme said the nation’s education sector has collapsed due to long years of neglect, which has negatively rubbed off on the economy.

According to him, “Our educational system is decaying from bottom up. Right from inception, the sector has been neglected, students are no longer ready to learn or study, rather they want to bribe. They want to even get people to write examination for them and this mentality has also crept into the university, students no longer want to read and the economy is the worse off for it”

On the choice of the theme and objective of the summit, Prof Ollor said, “By the end of this seminar, we are going to have a survey administered to all participants where you are going to tell us about your vision and mission; where you are now and where you want to be in the next three to five years and how you want to get there.Part of our objective is to help you achieve your mission and vision.

While shedding more light on the plans of the foundation, which is now five years, the professor of economics disclosed that its goal is to establish the Walter Ollor University.

Already, he said the foundation has begun moves to actualize this objective by working with the National University Commission (NUC) to get accreditation.
His words, “Our main aim is to establish a university which will bring qualitative education to Nigeria and deliver things in a way that students that graduate from our university will have the problem solving skills and also have close collaboration with industries. We found out that the main reason why graduate unemployment is on the increase in the country is because most of our graduates do not have problem solving skills, while the institutions are also far away from the industries and we need a lot of university- industry collaboration to address the unemployment problem confronting the nation.

Prof. Ollor justified the need for more universities saying the existing ones are not enough to meet the growing demands for education.On his part, the Managing Consultant of Star Team Consult, Dr Sam Ohuabunwa described success as the attainment of a goal and objective, adding that having the right kind of values helps in achieving this.

He said,” if you set an objective and you accomplish it, you are confident of success. It must be measurable and you must set a target, achievement of that is your success.

“Sustainable success is built; you have to do a lot and even go through pain but what is important is that you must know where you are going. It will have effect on your goal.”

Former vice chancellor of Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU), Prof Michael Faborode stressed the need to pursue our value system and ensure that the youths discover their purpose.

0 Comments