PAU celebrates 20 years, calls for elevation of education system in Nigeria

While marking its 20 years anniversary, the Pan Atlantic University (PAU), Lekki, Lagos, has called for the upliftment of Nigeria’s education standard, to make it globally competitive and relevant.

The Vice-Chancellor, Prof. Enase Okonedo, who disclosed this while briefing journalists, said the university, has evolved from just one school into six main units and a museum.

She described the School of Science and Technology as the latest kid on the block, as the school is the newest unit in the university.

“Pan-Atlantic University has a strong Christian identity. The truths PAU shares as an institution are not only common to Christianity but other religions. The institution has a strong pluralism and aims to approach the education for students in freedom and with freedom.”

With the 2022 to 2026 strategic master plan already set, the VC said the school targets 15 per cent in its new phase of development, which will also be consolidated on what it had done in the last 20 years.

The Dean of Lagos Business School (LBS), Prof Chris Ogbechie, described LBS as the child that gave birth to its mother. He said LBS was founded 30 years ago, 10 years before PAU.

“From the onset, LBS has and continues to be a world-class school that develops responsible leaders in management. Because of this, LBS places lots of emphasis on two areas, which are Business Ethics and Sustainability. These two key areas are included in all programmes at LBS to ensure that the core values of integrity, professionalism, a spirit of service, mutual respect and community are upheld and lived out. The LBS MBA programme is rated number one in Africa.”

Director of the Enterprise Development Centre (EDC), Dr. Peter Bamkole, said the institution must have graduated over 200,000 graduates in all the schools under PAU, even at professional levels.

He explained that every member of the ecosystem is followed up to ensure they are still making an impact and remained relevant, even after graduating from the school.

Bamkole announced plans to open an innovation hub on campus. “This will be a space where businesses or individuals can bring real-life business ideas and issues for students and researchers to work on and solve.”

Dwelling on areas of need for the university, the Dean, School of Science and Technology, which has just been created, Dr. Darlington Aghor, identified infrastructure as its major challenge.

“This lack of infrastructure has hindered innovations and creativities. Our target is to develop engineers that can solve problems at the speed of light, but without adequate infrastructure, this will be a challenge.

“The belief is that we must develop engineers that can solve lots of problems. What we are doing is to build the confidence of our engineers, but we will need lots of funding for equipment and others to get this done,” he added.

According to him, the school just invested about ₦150 million in the engineering department to ensure practicals, not just theories, to be able to churn out the best.