The Guest Lecturer, Prof. Pat Utomi while delivering his lecture at the Julius Okojie Lecture Theatre
The Founding Senior Faculty of the Lagos Business School, Professor Utomi has admonished Nigerians to challenge bad governance.
Professor Utomi who made the call while delivering the Convocation Lecture of the University, last Friday, said Nigerians should no longer be complacent, but demand from their leaders, stewardship and accountability.
“It is not politics but culture, which shapes the country, wealth without work is what everyone wants. Everyone wants a 4-wheel drive but nobody wants to work”, the Political Economist stated.
In his Lecture, titled, Education, Institutions and Nation Building, Prof. Utomi said the quest for the preparation of men and women to the highest levels of development required a sound education.
The don bemoaned indiscriminate award of honorary degrees on questionable people by Universities, wondering whether the purpose for the conferment of such degrees was still relevant.
The Lecturer called on Government and relevant institutions to curb the high incidence of cultism, examination malpractices, misconduct and other vices plaguing the nation’s educational institutions.
In his remarks, the Emeritus Professor of Medicine of the University of Ibadan, Prof. Oladipupo Akinkugbe, who was the Chairman at the occasion, described Professor Pat Utomi as a “political iconoclast who acts what he preaches”.
Professor Akinkugbe lauded UNAAB’s Management for running a University “that everyone is proud of”.
He equally showered encomiums on the Chancellor of the University, Obi (Prof.) Chike Edozie, the Asagba of Asaba, whom he said was his Dean of Faculty, 45 years ago when he was a young Lecturer at the University of Ibadan.
Speaking earlier, the Vice – Chancellor, Professor Oluwafemi Olaiya Balogun said the University was convinced that initiating public discourse was part of its social responsibility mandate of contributing to national development through the enthronement of a platform for intellectual, constructive and productive debates, capable of illuminating the nation’s path to accelerated growth and self-sustenance.
Professor Balogun added that the academic was genuinely worried and anxious of the need for the country to be
liberated from her present state of less-fancied growth and development.
He therefore assured that the University would not limit its revival intervention for the nation, to food sufficiency and poverty alleviation alone, but also leading the vanguard for intellectual diagnosis of its socio-political and economic fabrics.
