Professor Nurudeen Olorun-nimbe Adedipe making a point at the lecture

The Pioneer Vice-Chancellor of the University of Agriculture, Abeokuta (UNAAB), Professor Nurudeen Olorun-nimbe Adedipe stated this while delivering a Special Lecture, titled “Adediperian Thoughts on Contextual Agrology For Nigerian National Development”, to commemorate his 70th Birthday celebration, at the Julius Okojie Lecture Theatre Complex.

Professor Adedipe admonished that the country would need to re-embrace the Late Chief Obafemi Awolowo’s programme of the Farm Settlement Scheme of the 1950’s, saying it still has the viability of rescuing the nation from its current developmental predicament.

He decried government usual practice of scrapping inherited programmes as wasteful and detrimental to a genuine process of development, advising that concerted efforts administration for its support for agriculture as evident in the mobilization of N50 billion for farmers and agro-allied entrepreneurs under the Agricultural Credit Support Scheme. He however observed that the benefits were however, slow in reaching the bulk of the farmers whom he said, are mostly based in the rural hinterland where there are no banking facilities, thus minimizing access to the offer by Government.

Professor Adedipe called for a deliberate efforts aimed at luring the youths to farming as a business enterprise and also advised for a renewed image and perception towards projecting agriculture as a socio-economic primer of development with farming as a viable and respectable business.

Earlier in his welcome address, the incumbent Vice-Chancellor, Professor Oluwafemi Balogun said “it is imperative to celebrate Professor Adedipe in his life time, given the contextualization of his uncommon passion and devotion to the planting, nurturing and weaning of the University, out of the jungle of despair and skepticism to a lush, beautiful and desired centre of academic excellence”.

He assured Professor Adedipe that all his values and principles will remain eternal and passed across generations in the University and beyond.

Professor Balogun also gave kudos to Professor Adedipe for his magnanimity in endowing his rich personal academic collections which he described as “an act of undying penchant towards the upliftment of humanity”.

The Chairman at the occasion and legal luminary, Aare Afe Babalola, in his address, extolled the virtues of Professor Adedipe, describing him as an academic icon that deserved to be nationally celebrated.