* As VC urges collaboration, need to confront global challenges
A professor African History at Vanderbilt University, USA, Moses Ochonu, has charged Nigerian universities to embrace change, integrate multidisciplinarity and shun academic inbreeding as a strategy of being relevant in the challenging 21st century.
Prof. Ochonu made this call while presenting the fourth Public Lecture of the African School of Economics (The Pan-African University of Excellence), Abuja, on the theme “The 21st Century Nigerian University: Pitfalls and Pathways” on Thursday, June 26, 2025.
According to the Guest Speaker, universities all over the world are going through many challenges as the global economy is convulsing under the influence of overlapping technological and digital revolutions in knowledge, research and learning. Nigerian universities, he emphasised, are not excluded from these pressures.
Prof. Ochonu decried the subversion of foundational cosmopolitan ethos of higher education in some public universities which makes them to become “appendages of parochial projects of exclusivity” arguing that intellectual pluralism is being replaced by academic inbreeding.
While acknowledging that the age-long struggle of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has secured some basic dignities for the academic workplace, he noted that the struggle has also become part of the problem, adding that “many lecturers continue to skip classes; poor or non-existent supervision and mentorship of postgraduate students persisted; and many lecturers continued to teach from outdated lecture notes, making no effort to update their instruction” while others patronise pay-to-publish predatory journals.
Prof. Ochonu recommended a Student Bill of Rights to protect students in their academic, supervisory, and mentorship relationship with lecturers. He also canvassed revamping the craft of teaching, stressing that universities should establish centres of teaching and institute awards for teaching excellence in order to boost quality instruction.
Apart from encouraging the establishment of Writing Centres, the lecturer also suggested that of all forms of inherited knowledge conventions of the Nigerian university system should be decolonised.
While emphasising that repositioning the Nigerian university for the 21st century requires radical, institutional, legislative, curricular and legislative initiatives, the award-winning scholar advocated for a system that allows professionals and workers in the society to acquire new skills, upskill in emerging areas and satisfy their curiosities through single course enrolments while stressing the need for curriculum reform.
Earlier in his address, the Vice-Chancellor of ASE, Prof. Mahfouz Adedimeji called for collaboration among universities while tasking them on the need to confront global challenges.
Citing a study by the University of Lincoln, Prof. Adedimeji identified the 10 grand challenges of the 21st century as changing economic powers, living in a global society, void of vision and foresight, technological disruption, migration and mobility (which manifest in what we call the Japa syndrome in Nigeria), conflict and war, civic disaffection, increasing inequality of wealth and income, mitigating environmental and ecological damage as well as identities and changing norms in the society.
He noted that addressing these challenges requires functional university education and urged universities to come together to overcome those challenges as well as the national ones.
Alluding to the eagle, which he said would fly high when it catches a tortoise and drop it knowing that the impact of the fall would break its hard shell and then eat it, he urged Nigerians to accept challenges.
An obstacle, he stressed, would therefore be converted by an eagle to an opportunity to use its full strength to fly high.
The Vice Chancellor however counselled that, unlike the eagle that hunts alone, universities should synergise. “I, therefore, call for concerted efforts of the Triple-Helix, the government, the academia and the industry/society in according the university its pride of place by doing what is right at the right time. It is said that one can travel fast alone but can only travel far together,” he said.
Prof. Adedimeji also traced the establishment of the first university in the world to 859 through the University of Qarawiyyin in Fez, Morocco, which made Africa the cradle of higher education.
He noted that university education has equally grown in Nigeria to over 300 universities while debates continue to centre on the issues of quality, quantity, access and relevance.
Guest speaker with the VC and management of ASE
He encouraged Nigerian universities to consider their challenges as opportunities while clamouring for collaboration. According to him, “my call is for more synergy, more collaboration and more partnership among our universities for all-round development and a radical departure from working in silos,” while reiterating the imperative of leveraging technology and partnerships to address issues.
Goodwill messages were delivered by the Executive Secretary of the Nigerian Universities Commission (NUC), Prof. Abdullahi Yusuf Ribadu; the Secretary-General of the Committee of Vice Chancellors of Nigerian Universities (CVCNU) and Vice-Chancellors and representatives of other universities like Baze University, African University of Science and Technology, African Aerospace and Aviation University and other tertiary institutions.
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