Legal luminary, Aare Afe Babalolla, SAN, has urged Nigerians to embrace hard work, honesty and faith in the country to achieve greatness.
The elder statesman, who is the founder of Afe Babalola University, (ABUAD) also described education as one of the major antidotes to multitude of challenges confronting the nation.
Babalola stated this in Ado Ekiti at the weekend while briefing newsmen on the latest achievement of the university as published in an article, “Impact Rankings 2024” by Ellie Bothwell.
The former Pro-Chancellor of University of Lagos said ABUAD was ranked the best Nigerian University for the third consecutive time, 4th in Africa and 142th in the world, as recently published in the 2024 Times Higher Education Impact Rankings.
According to Babalola, the university also ranked first globally for SDG 7 on Affordable and Clean Energy, Outreach Programmes scoring 98%, and Stewardship Programmes with 98.2%.
He expressed confidence that the country would be great only if the three principles being exhibited by the University are emulated by Nigerians.
The senior lawyer who listed some of the challenges confronting the nation to include economic hardship, poverty, banditry, extremism, religious bigotry, among others, said such could only be addressed with sound and quality education.
“Everything in life depends on hope. Hope is faith and faith is success of what to do. I make bold to say that our performance gives us the hope in this country that Nigeria can achieve what we have achieved. Nigeria can be greater. With hard work, the way we are doing things here, with hard work, honesty and faith, Nigeria can be better and get out of doldrums. I believe that hardship breeds determination, determination breeds faith, and faith never fails,” he said.
Balalola who urged Nigerians universities to embrace and copy the standard being set in ABUAD added, “I don’t know why we don’t like good things or learn from others; you can never make it in life unless you copy good things and learn from others. But what we copy here (Nigeria) is bad things – drug abuse, internet fraud etc.
“My expectation is that we make quality and functional education delivery our model. This country may not change until we make sure that our goal is to copy and do what is good.
“The NUC which in the first year described our university as a model, benchmark and pride of universities. This university is one thing I want to nurture to a stage that it will be at par with Harvard University and other great universities across the world. My hope and mission is that those working with me will replicate what I am doing, and what we are doing at ABUAD,” he said.
The senior advocate of Nigeria who noted that the 15-year-old institution has achieved what they never anticipated in the next 50 years, attributed the rise in ranking of ABUAD to its quality curriculum, stable and predictable academic calendar.
“We are here today to share some good news for the third consecutive year. Part of it is that our 15-year-old university has again been ranked as No. 1 University in Nigeria, and Number 142 in education generally in the world.
“The above notwithstanding, our ranking position has changed significantly. The reason is because this year, our ranking has gone beyond the shores of Nigeria and, now gone global.
“This result constitutes a challenge to all Nigerians, particularly our universities. We are all aware of the economic doldrums that the country is battling with. I must stress that education is the panacea to all the ignorance, extremism, poverty, religious bigotry and tribalism among other problems confronting the country.
“It is my conviction that if people can emulate the type of complete and innovative education system, hard work, honesty and faith, being exhibited in ABUAD, Nigeria would have been better for it”, he said.
While commending and congratulating the management staff and other members of the University community on the feat, Aare Babalola further encouraged the staff to see the current ranking as a call to duty, “so that apart from remaining number one next year, we will be number one in other areas, and number one globally in everything”, he said.
The Vice Chancellor of ABUAD, Prof. Smaranda Olarinde, commended the founder for deploying his hard-earned resources in championing the needed revolution in the education sector with the establishment of the University.
Olarinde, who just clocked second year in office as VC, after acting for three years, said the institution’s management and staff would continue to justify Babalola’s huge investment, by working harder towards making the institution one of the best 100 in the world.