Afe Babalola Blames Insecurity for Lack of Quality Education

Founder of Afe Babalola University, Ado-Ekiti, and Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), Chief Afe Babalola, has blamed the growing insecurity and socio-politico-economic problems in Nigeria on lack of functional and quality education at the different levels in the country.

He argued that “without quality education, a country is doomed.”

The legal icon also called on parents and well-to-do Nigerians to invest in quality education in the country, adding that, “I realise better than most that education is power. I also know that education can change individuals, societies, nations and indeed the whole world.”

ABUADDeputyDirector, Corporate Affairs, Mr. Tunde Olofintila, stated this in a statement issued yesterday and titled ‘Afe Babalola wins 2020 African Lifetime Achievers Award,’ made available in Ado Ekiti.

The statement revealed that the elder statesman spoke in reaction to the award for deserving Africans who had made significant contributions to community development, leadership, entrepreneurship, agriculture and education.

Olofintila stated that the Chairperson of the African Achievers Awards and Former Civil Mayor of the London Borough of Hackney, United Kingdom, Susan FajanaThomas, said the award, slated for December 5, was in view of Babalola’s “contributions to the African educational and agricultural sectors.”

The ABUAD founder thanked the organisers of the African Achievers Awards for the beautiful things said about him, which he acknowledged as “a call to more duty, a catalyst that will propel, inspire and encourage him to want to do more for the African continent”.

Babalola said, “If the country (Nigeria) has a quality education and functional education, it will not be going through the various crises of insecurity, spiral unemployment, kidnapping, robbery, gross underdevelopment, and unpaid salaries and other emoluments it is currently experiencing”.

The ABUAD founder lauded the

“selfless and committed teachers” who imparted quality and functional education in him in Emmanuel Primary School, Ado-Ekiti, the only formal/classroom education the legal icon ever had, saying it was the quality education he had in the beginning that shaped his life to become what he had become in life