Renowned public speaker and international mediator, Prof. Patrick Lumumba, has called for respect, due and prompt funding of African Universities if the continent is determined to develop.

He stated this on Thursday, while speaking as guest lecturer at the ongoing University of Ilorin’s 50th anniversary celebration.

He noted that Nigeria’s vast human resource potential continues to shine globally, as evidenced by its countless engineers, professors, and doctors in Europe, America, and across Africa.

According to the Pan Africanist, “The rise of Africa depends on giving the continent’s scholars and institutions their rightful place, beginning with universities such as the University of Ilorin.”

Reflecting on Africa’s past commitments, he recalled the 1980 Lagos Plan of Action, where leaders pledged to strengthen education and intra-African trade, but it was eventually jettisoned.

Also, he cited the 1991 Abuja Declaration, in which African nations promised to allocate 15 per cent of their national budgets to health, a target still unmet decades later.

He said, “These unfulfilled promises illustrate the gap between aspiration and action on the continent.”

He therefore advised the management of Unilorin to act towards the implementation of policies that will benefit its immediate community, Nigeria, and Africa as a whole.

He posited that Africa remains the only continent where academics are undervalued while politicians become multi-billionaires, a situation which he emphasised must change for the continent to progress.

Lumumba lamented the nation’s current state of food dependency, noting that despite the ongoing cultural debate over Jollof Rice between Nigeria and Ghana, the country continues to import rice, beef, and poultry in large quantities.

He said, “Today, Africa cannot feed itself. This must stop.”

He also disclosed that the solution to Africa’s challenges lies in a reformed, indigenous educational framework.

He charged Nigerian Universities to focus on creating a new generation of graduates equipped to solve local problems, expressing a vision for a time when “the minds of young Nigerians and the minds of young Africans will be decolonised.”

According to Lumumba, the pathway to self-reliance is a revolution in agriculture, led by academia and practical engagement in areas such as aquaculture, poultry farming, and sugarcane farming, among others.

“I’m looking forward to the day when the engineers produced at the University of Ilorin will solve the problems of the continent of Africa.

“I look forward to the University of Ilorin producing different graduates of agriculture; so that when we talk of aquaculture in Nigeria, when we talk about poultry farming in Nigeria, when we talk about sugar cane farming in Nigeria, Africa will be able to feed itself,” he said.

He, however, confirmed that Unilorin is already beginning to engage in the necessary large-scale agricultural projects to shift the national narrative from dependency to self-sufficiency, saying: “I see the 15,000-hectare area, and I see Jatropha farms and Teak farms.”