Secretary-General of the

Speaking at the speaker at the 11th convocation lecture of Covenant University (CU) Ota, Ogun State, his topic was titled 'Benchmarking the quality and relevance of Higher Education for National Development.”

According to him, the time has come for "African universities to create global academy of commons – a global community of scholars, who although responsive to the local and national needs of our society, nevertheless transcend national polities to practise a ‘science’ that produces collective knowledge for the human community.

“Such a system would allow our universities to develop to imbibe the corpus of scientific knowledge, apply it to our context, re-imagine and innovate it, and contribute it back to the global economy. It will also allow us to produce graduates who are simultaneously African; citizens of both nation and the world.”

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Faborede pointed at underfunding as the major factor responsible for the stunted growth of universities in Africa. He then urged authorities to increase their level of investment in tertiary institutions.

“To bridge the knowledge gap and close the global development, Nigeria especially, must increase the level of their investment in funding higher education, as well as embrace bold initiative for diversified funding by other stakeholders.

“One of such is to mobilise resources from the private financial sector with government collateral support and loans. A necessary corollary is the adequate provision of scholarship and bursaries to brilliant and indigent students to remove inequity. The universities too need to accentuate their internal revenue generation through entrepreneurial and commercial engagement, applied research output, endowment and philanthropy etc.”