Afe Babalola tasks teachers to embrace ICT

Gabriel Dike

Founder and Chancellor of Afe Babalola University, Ado-Ekiti (ABUAD), Chief Afe Babalola (SAN), has urged universities’ lecturers and teachers in the country to harness digital technology to improve the sector.

Babalola said this at the virtual meeting to commemorate the annual National Association of Proprietors of Private Schools (NAPPS) Day, yesterday, in Lagos. He said any university that sought  to attain world class status, must ensure its lecturers or teachers go digital.

The  theme for this year’s NAPPS Day was  “Digital revolution as a tool in revamping Nigeria’s education.”

“The impact of the Coronavirus pandemic has made the digital revolution morally imperative. This is because going digital means that one fully understands how ones audience use computer technology to access what they need at the right time. This virtual meeting is timely because people around the world, regardless of their locations use videos, audios and texts to link up on-line.

“I can remember very vividly that when I was growing up, there were no cars, electricity and no telephones in Ado-Ekiti. At school, we were using chalk and slates, while  our teachers were using chalk and blackboards. All of those have since changed. We can now communicate with the world right where we are seated through the instrumentalities of our hand sets and computers,”Babalola said.

He said that UNESCO expected governments to spend 26 per cent of their annual budgets on education, but lamented that the military had cut down spendings on eduction.

“This was achieved in the first republic, but when the military took over in 1966, they reduced the amount voted for education to as low as seven per cent. Today is much more worse, lecturers and teachers go on strike for non-payment of salaries. But there is no private universities where teachers are not paid regularly,” he said.

President of NAPPS, Chief Yomi Otubela said the closure of schools and the sudden break in the economic cycle of private schools due to COVID- 19 pandemic was challenging for members.

‘’This abrupt closure of schools by the government to protect the students in the country, unfortunately, brought a lot of untold hardship on private schools owners who rely heavily on school fees to meet up with obligations such as payment of staff salaries, operational costs and repayment of loans obtained from various financial institutions.’’