Bianca Iboma
A former Vice Chancellor of Joseph Ayo Babalola University, Osun State, Prof. Sola Fajana has emphasised the use of technology as a credible rebirth that would position the educational sector.
He said this while delivering the 5th Distinguished Lecture of the Moutain Top University, Magboro, Ogun State with the theme ‘Promoting Educational Rebirth Through Faith-Based Institutions’.
Prof. Fajana, while delivering his lecture, said Nigerians and its leaders had shown significant concern about the quality, access and functionality of education as a veritable tool to advance the course of development.
Fajana added that many Nigerian private tertiary institutions are faith-based and designed to ensure quality due to various challenges experienced in public tertiary institutions which had resulted in series of strike actions, menace of cultism, among other issues.
He said many religious organisations felt it was necessary to established these faithe-based institutions to correct some of the ills in the public education sector as well as provide quality education to shape the destinies of our youths.
“Faith-based institutions have consistently played a credible role in the advancement of education in Nigeria.
“Education is a veritable instrument in character moulding. It is vital for our youths to get the right type of education so they can become good leaders and citizens in the society,” he stressed.
He added that Nigerians have seen the negative results of secular education propagated and implemented by past governments, but that when private institutions begun operations in the country, the results contrasted sharply as the new policy of private sector education took care of the constant strikes that characterized public institutions where students had to stay many months at home pending when government and the authorities resolve their crises.
He stated that religious organisations coming in to the education sector have really contributed a lot towards improving the quality of education in Nigeria, saying that they have been able to effect changes in the area of morality, godliness to the nation’s governance and day-to-day affair in the society.
He continued,”Faith-based institutions would produce a vast army of youths with the fear of God that would form the fulcrum of a national revival with utmost development of the society.
“The main aim of Faith-based institution is to educate youths in the way of God”,he explained.
“Everyone knows that tertiary institution is more than just earning a degree or choosing a career, institutions that are faith-based are related to faith tradition.
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“Most student who attends this institutions have good places to undertake their life journey.
“When one chooses a faith-based institution it is more than just having a spiritual growth, as this institutions offers academic and student life programmes with a point of view all round education.
In the same vein, Vice Chancellor of MTU, Prof. Elijah Ayolabi, said the institution and most faith-based institutions were born for the progress of Nigeria, Africa and the world and are open to people of all faith who must abide by the rules and regulations of the church.
Ayolabi, who is the first African to be honoured as the 2015 Honorary Lecturer to the Middle-East and Africa by The Society of Exploration Geophysicists (SEG), the international umbrella body for all Geophysicists said, “Though admission is open to people from different religious bodies but they would have to abide by the rules and regulations of faith-based institution established for missions and total development of the society.”
He also said that faith-based institutions has the ability to transformed the declined in the academic sector that the nation is experiencing at the moment.