Bishop Oyedepo Tasks Nigeria On "Old Fashioned" Education Policy

The Chancellor of Landmark University, Omu-Aran, Kwara State, Bishop David Oyedepo,  has called on African heads of state to review their countries’ education policy to meet the world’s technological advancements relating to the needs of their people.

Speaking at the university’s sixth convocation held on Friday, the cleric said there was an urgent need to repackage the continent’s education system to align with the best global practices.

The university recorded 51 first-class graduates out of 432 presented for the convocation.

Female graduands dominated the list of best graduating students in all the institution’s colleges with 26 of them earning the first-class status. Oyedepo said a good and formidable formal education system must be a departure from knowledge to empowerment.

He said, “It must be a departure from figure to future-building, a departure from points to facts, a departure from mathematics to life-matics and a departure from legalism to realism.’’

He noted that the worsening food crisis remained the greatest threat to the survival of Africa as a continent, saying it could wipe out an entire generation if not checked.

Oyedepo said Africans must learn to engage in intensive agricultural endeavours if they must survive in the face of impending global food crisis.

According to him, food security is a major global concern as over one billion people are suffering from starvation, hunger and malnutrition. “There is no substitute for food as far as human substance is concerned; there is no software for addressing food challenges. No matter the state of the economy of any nation, the last thing to remove from the budget is food; food security is not an ideology but a necessity. There is nothing that challenges human dignity like lack of food and with the massive arable land we have as a nation, hunger is obviously an insult to our intelligence.”

The chancellor said the need for the institution to address these anomalies informed the introduction and prioritising of agri-preneurship, entrepreneurial studies as well as Toward Total Graduate concepts.

He said the institution was committed to a new approach to leading an agrarian revolution by making everyone who knew how to eat to also, know how to farm.

“The number one purpose for setting up Landmark University is to help young people to see the treasure hidden in the mother earth through agri-preneurship and other incentives.

“Our university life-coach programmes, compulsory for all final year undergraduates students, are designed to provide pathways to a life of meaning, fulfilment and out-of-this-world order accomplishment,” he said.

The Vice-Chancellor of the institution, Prof. Adeniyi Olayanju,  attributed the institution’s landmark achievements to massive spiritual support and continuous investment in an ultra-modern facility development.

“We are unrelenting in advancing the frontiers of research activities that would, among others, boost the agricultural value chain. This, we hope, will engender the much-needed food sufficiency in our continent,” he said.