THE pro-chancellor and chairman of the governing council, University of Lagos, Akoka, Dr Wale Babalakin, has said the Federal Government would need between N2.5 trillion and N3 trillion yearly to provide quality education for Nigerians.
He said government alone cannot afford such huge amount of money (which he said represents close to 60 per cent of total receipts in the system), hence the need for individuals, corporate bodies and alumni associations to support the government towards delivering quality education to the citizens.
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Babalakin made the remarks in Lagos at a fundraising dinner organised by the alumni of the College of Medicine, UNILAG, last Saturday.
Representative of the Lagos State governor, Mr Olufemi Onanuga; chairman of Premier Lotto Limited (a.k.a Baba Ijebu) and philanthropist, Mr Kessington Adebutu; and the Olugbo of Ugbo kingdom, Oba Fredrick Obateru Akinruntan, were among numerous personalities in attendance.
To deliver quality education to Nigerians requires a lot of money, which government alone cannot afford, Babalakin said.
“And since we cannot continue to give poor quality education to our people because of funding, we must look for alternative funding to deliver quality and quantitative education to Nigerians,” he stressed.
While commending the alumni for giving back to their alma mater years after graduation, Babalakin, who chaired the occasion, said he was looking forward to a time when Nigerian public universities would be so financially buoyant that government funding would only be an addition.
In his own address, the chairman of the organising committee of the event, Professor Oladapo Ashiru, said universities in the developed countries have a day set aside to celebrate their legacies and use the money raised at such event for their development purposes, hence the MEDILAG alumni’s fundraising dinner.
He explained that the target of the alumni is to raise over N6.8 billion, from which they would build a standard teaching and administrative block (N3 billion) and medical research centre (N2 billion), both to be equipped with state-of-the-art facilities; and also to do some renovation works, provide modern security system and some utility vehicles.
The availability of those facilities, he noted, would not only boost training and medical research activities in the college and Nigeria by extension, but would also stem brain drain and medical tourism.
In his remark, the provost of the college, Professor Foluso Lesi, commended the alumni for their efforts in ensuring that their alma mater sustains the tempo of producing quality medical personnel, urging them not to rest on their oars.
He noted that the 57-year-old college which today has nine programmes and over 500 yearly enrolments into medicine, dentistry, nursing, medical lab sciences, pharmacology, and physiotherapy had produced more than 6,000 graduates so far.
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