| Back to school at 68
•Obasanjo matriculates at open varsity
By LUCKY NWANKWERE, Abuja
Thursday,
November 30, 2006
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•President
Olusegun Obasanjo
Photo: Sun News Publishing |
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President Olusegun Obasanjo on Wednesday made good his promise
to go back to school to widen his scope of knowledge by enrolling
at the National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN).
At a special matriculation ceremony held in Abuja in his honour,
the new student with matriculation number NOU060323192 took
an oath to be disciplined and obey the vice chancellor and
other officers of the university as well as refrain from acts
calculated to disrupt the activities of the school.
It was a ceremony which saw the visitor to the school transform
into a student for the purpose of oath taking and back again
as visitor so he could deliver his keynote address.
The president said he was out to study and develop himself
and would not in any way seek to be accorded any special privileges
except those conferred on him by virtue of his studentship.
He also pledged to take his studies very seriously, pointing
out rather humourously that being the visitor to the school
would not make any difference as his visitorship would formally
end by May 29, 2007 .
By enrolling in the school, he said he had demonstrated that
no one could be too big, busy or old to learn and that the
open university with its distance learning facilities was
a functional reality which Nigerians should take advantage
of.
Witnessed by members of the Federal Executive Council and
those of the university community and some top government
functionaries, the president was full of thanks to the Senate
of the university “for considering me worthy to be admitted
as a student”.
He said his administration decided to resuscitate the national
open university in its quest to seek ways of coping with the
challenges of accelerated socio-economic transformation in
the emerging knowledge-driven, complex and highly competitive
world.
Saying the university has the capacity to admit more than
100,000 students by March 2007, he called on Nigerians, particularly
those who cannot be admitted into the conventional university
system to take advantage of NOUN to better their lot.
NOUN Vice Chancellor, Prof. Olugbemiro Jegede praised President
Obasanjo’s courage and exemplary life in enrolling at
the school, saying he (president) had proved that example
is better than precept.
“Having duly applied for and his admission gone through
the due process, President Obasanjo has shown that the notion
of a divided, rather than a continuous lifetime in which education
is followed by work is no more current,” he stated.
He said there could be no greater endorsement of government’s
decision to establish the university and no greater advocacy
to be pursued than the singular step which the president had
taken to become a student at the school.
“We are here today to matriculate our indefatigable
president, who having worked tirelessly to project education
to the front burner of national development has decided that
the taste of the pudding is in the eating”, he further
stated.
With the step taken, he said the president had become the
very first serving president anywhere in the world to enroll
into an open university in his own country and had thus challenged
world leaders to pay more than lip service to life long learning
and education for all.
The pro-chancellor of the university and chairman of its
governing council, Prof. N.M. Gadzama, in his speech on the
occasion, said the president’s matriculation was worthy
of emulation not only by Nigerian leaders, but by other African
leaders.
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