Afe Babalola University, Ado-Ekiti (ABUAD) has announced plans to honour former Lagos State governor and National Stalwart of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu and the Sultan of Sokoto, Alhaji Muhammadu Sa’ad Abubakar III, with doctoral honorary degrees.
The ceremony for the honour will hold during the university’s seventh convocation on October 19.
Also to be honoured are: the Obi of Onitsha, His Royal Majesty Igwe Nnaemeka Achebe and an entrepreneur and Chairman/Chief Executive Officer, Green Energy International Limited, Prof. Anthony Adegbulugbe.
Addressing reporters Monday in ABUAD to herald a weeklong convocation ceremony and its 10th anniversary, the institution’s Acting Vice Chancellor Prof Smaranda Olarinde said the quartet deserve the honour.
Olarinde said the awardees were carefully chosen based on their indelible marks on the sand of time and their contributions to nation-building and humanity.
On the honorary degrees, Olarinde said: “The quartet deserve to be celebrated. The beauty of honorary degrees is that they are awarded to persons who are deserving of such honours, having excelled in character and useful application of such intellect and academic excellence.
“In many cases, honorary degrees are rated higher than the degrees we all study to obtain since so many parameters are considered before they are bestowed on persons deserving them. So, the persons we chose deserve to be celebrated.”
The vice chancellor said Asiwaju Tinubu was not chosen on the basis of his soaring political credentials because ABUAD is not a political entity.
She explained that integrity, patriotism, selflessness were used to guide the selectors’ sense of judgement.
According to her, the APC stalwart was considered worthy because of his unparalleled selfless services to humanity and nation-building.
Olarinde said Asiwaju Tinubu has helped thousands to rediscover lost destinies and given hope to the hopeless by providing a compass for those wandering in the wilderness of difficulties and uncertainties.
“We didn’t consider Asiwaju Bola Tinubu’s political career, but he was found worthy because of his immense contribution to humanity and various selfless services that surpass those of anybody else in Nigeria,” she said.
The acting VC said 1,088 graduates will get Bachelor’s and postgraduate degrees.
Breaking down of the figures of the graduates, Olarinde said 979 and 109 will bag Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees.
Among the first degrees graduates are 99 students who made First Class, 419 made Second Class Upper, 378 had Second Class Lower degrees and 83 had Third Class degrees.
She said the university’s Law Faculty, has been rated the best by the National Universities Commission (NUC) with the construction of Moot Court, Law Clinic, modern e-Library, Lexis Nexis and Computer Law and other accessories that can conveniently take care of 1,500 students.
The acting VC added that the founder of the university, Aare Afe Babalola (SAN), has been leveraging on his contacts across the world to broker partnerships between ABUAD and other foreign universities in Europe, Asia and America.
She said: “We are greatly indebted to our founder, Aare Afe Babalola, for giving the needed supports that has made us overshot our expectations in the first 10 years. It is on his shoulders we often lean to veer into the future of functional, quality and reformatory education in Nigeria.
“Even though we have overshot our expectations, we will not stop growing until we realise our plan of becoming one of the 100 best universities in the world,” she said.
