Professor of Plant Nematology, Steve Afolami, says it is of utmost importance that researches carried out in the countries varsities should be nationalist in focus in order to benefit the country.
Afolami, who is of the Department of Crop Protection, College of Plant Science and Crop Production (COLPLANT), Federal University of Agriculture, Abeokuta (FUNAAB), while assessing the impact of research on the fortunes of the country, said that it was high time the country closed its eyes to foreign researches, and search for appropriate solutions to her problems using research products from within.
He assured that FUNAAB would continue to engage in impactful researches with national focus, through its Agricultural Media Resources and Extension Centre (AMREC), as well as the Institute for Food Security, Environmental Resources and Agricultural Research (IFSERAR), stressing that, “I have always wished that there would be a national focus. For example, the Federal Ministry of Agriculture, in collaboration with the Presidency, could identify problems, seek for solutions and follow-up to a logical conclusion; no matter how long it takes, and without any form of distraction.”
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Afolami lauded the efforts of FUNAAB in rewarding academic excellence, through the award of scholarships through which the university has produced several brilliant students, who have become professors, such as Jonathan Atungwu, Lateef Sanni, and Kolawole Adebayo, and are doing well and excelling on the global level.
He revealed that FUNAAB had.
Broaching on a few issues that impact the Nigerian farmers negative, the university teacher disclosed that root-knot nematodes, (Meloidogyne specie), remains the main nematode problem facing these farmers, without them knowing, even as he disclosed that the school has contributed immensely to carrying out researches on nematodes, with the development of an improved method of screening nematodes that is considered a great contribution by the university towards the science of nematology.
“Nematodes are microscopic, and most often, their adverse effects are wrongly diagnosed as nutrient problems having to do with the soil. It is only after the soil had been treated and no solution found, that people would recognise that something else could be the problem.
“Now that nematology as a science is spreading and more scientists are being produced in that area, at least in Nigeria, farmers are beginning to realise that a good number of their crops are devastated by nematodes”, he added.
