VUNA HOLDS SECOND PUBLIC LECTURE

The Second Public Lecture on the Public Lecture Series of the University has been held. Declaring the event open, the Archbishop of Owerri Ecclesiatical Province and Chairman of Council, Most Rev. Dr. Anthony J. V. Obinna noted that the greatness of the country of Israel was because Israel sees its citizens as its oil noting that the public lecture on the theme: “Students as Our Renewable Resources” was apt. Earlier in his welcome address, the Vice Chancellor, Professor David I. Ker, OON noted that the University made discipline its priority because it was striving to be among the top 10 Universities in the world stressing that it was in furtherance of that objective that the University was arming her students with holistic formation that combined academic and professional training with physical, moral, spiritual, social, and cultural formation in line with the social teachings of the Catholic Church. The Guest Speaker. Dr. Kole Shettima, the Country Director of MacArthur Foundation emphasised the need for government to commit larger share of the revenue to education, stating that investment on students would bring about a knowledge-based economy which is the bedrock of the development of any nation. Dr. Shettima highlighted that knowledge and skills have become the global currency of the 21st-century economies and that it was good to have oil, gas, timber and diamond because they can buy jobs but weaken society in the long run unless used to building schools. He described “resource curse also known as the paradox of the plenty” as the inability of countries which have abundant natural resources to translate these resources into improved condition of living of the people and regretted that countries with fewer natural resources tended to have higher economic growth and well being of their citizens because such countries made huge investment on educating its citizens. “Nigeria is often presented as a poster child of resource curse. We have the 10th largest oil reserve and indeed we have more gas than oil. More than 80 percent of our income is from oil and it also accounts for more than 80 percent of expenditure. Oil is said to have netted $500billion since 1971 and about half in the decade. But it has been a source of regional and national conflicts. There is little to show for all the oil resources. We measure 156 in the Human Development Index out of 192 countries and territories. Nigeria accounts for 2 percent of the world population but 10 percent of global maternal mortality.” Dr. Shettima lamented that a recent Federal Bureau of Statistics showed that more than 61.9 percent of Nigerians are in absolute poverty and 69 percent in relative poverty, while inequality among Nigerians is growing at a very fast rate. The MacArthur Foundation Country Director decried the pathetic situation of the nation’s educational system, highlighting that only 4 percent of girls in Northern Nigeria finish secondary education; 50 percent of teachers in Sokoto State secondary schools can’t read and write. “Nigerians spend nearly $300 million in Ghana pursuing education; Nigerians make up to 22 percent of students in Ghanaian institutions; in WAEC less than 25 percent of students pass at credit levels in the two core subjects of Mathematics and English.” He noted that reversing the Resource Curse in Nigeria would require a significant shift of mind and attitudes, emphasising that students and young people are resources and we must turn away from thinking of them as problems, and called for public and private investments in skills, knowledge and education.