Education Can Solve World’s Social Issues, Challenges –
By deepening educational cooperation and facilitating collaboration in critical areas such as entrepreneurship, innovation and technology, more opportunities are created to find solutions to the social issues and challenges in the world.
Vice President Yemi Osinbajo (SAN) stated this yesterday during a meeting with senior administration officials and researchers at Carleton University, Ottawa on day two of his working visit to Canada.
According to a statement by his media aide, Laolu Akande, he also met some Canadian based business and technology related interests on Tuesday before joining the movie screening of "Two Weeks in Lagos," a Nollywood movie produced by
Nigerian-Canadians.
Speaking at the notable university, Prof Osinbajo observed that, despite several societal challenges, “one of the things that we have seen is that our major social issues can be resolved by people who are thinking about it and have opportunities to reason it out, especially those who can stand aside and look in from the outside and think about it.”
The vice president stated that the collaboration between Carleton University and universities in Nigeria is one of such ways of providing solutions to some of these social challenges.
He stated that, “the idea of an actual involvement with the University system in Nigeria, such as the University of Lagos and University of Nigeria, Nsukka, as well as secondary schools like the Atlantic Hall, and others, are important because they provide an opportunity for sustainable longrunning relationships.”
In his view, the VP believed that “the collaboration is one that can yield the sorts of incredible benefits that we hope we can get.
“We are also talking about the education of children; we have a major challenge with out-of-school children. We now have a radio school programme, an initiative of an NGO (reaching 55,000 children). Many of these children listen to radio in some parts of the country where radio is the major means of communication.
“We could do much more, in deepening that, using technology, and looking at scaling them up. The challenges and the issues we have to confront are huge, so solutions will need to be on that scale too.”
On arrival, the VP was received by the President of Carleton University, Benoit-Antoine Bacon, who “welcomes the opportunity to deepen our partnership with the beautiful country of Nigeria.”
Afterwards, Osinbajo paid a visit to the Innovation Hub at the University, where the Acting Director at the Hub, John Nelson, stated that the university has a large number of Nigerian students studying there, adding that they will be excited at any opportunity for partnership that will further encourage students to study and bring change.
Similarly, in another meeting at the university, there was a presentation using a 3-D Hologram machine showing how teachers can promote online learning for