Clement Adeyi, Osogbo
Towards proffering a lasting solution to the multifarious socio-political and economic crises bedeviling the nation, Prof. Henry Odeyinka has called on the Federal Government and the academia to leverage on research development to be able to proffer lasting solutions.
Prof. Odeyinka, who is the Head of Department of Quantity Surveying, Obafemi Awolowo University Ile-Ife Osun State made the call, on Tuesday, while delivering the 318th Inaugural Lecture of the University.
The don, who spoke on the theme: “Unsettling the Uncertainty of Construction in an Uncertain World: The Cost, the Challenges and Conquests” told Daily Sun on the sideline of the event that there were myriads of uncertainties in the country which bordered on insecurity with attendant Boko Haram insurgency, kidnapping, herdsmen’s killings, economic malaise, poverty among other socio-political and economic challenges.
He said the problem could be solved if only the academics in the tertiary institutions would devote more attention to high quality research capable of addressing crucial issues that could also serve as the panacea to the country’s nagging problems.
He stressed that it was not the number of papers that academics had in their archives, libraries nor academic journals that mattered, but those that were relevant and had the target capacity to address peculiar challenges in the environments where they were found.
He urged the academics in tertiary institutions to focus their research works much more on the different sectors of the economy, through which issues of economic travails, poverty, insecurity and other national crises could be effectively addressed.
He pointed out that in advanced countries, national crises and crucial issues were addressed through education, relevant data and information which could only be accessed and developed through research work in the academia. But in Nigeria, there was laxity in these areas. He said stakeholders especially in the government circle did not reckon so much with information and data to find the root cause of problems before proffering solutions,and that is why the problems linger.
Professor Agboola called on the Federal Government to encourage the academia in paying more attention to research through adequate funding to enable them devise the relevant data and information that could serve as solutions to the nation’s problems and to engender sicio- economic development.
While delivering the lecture, the Professor dwelt very much on current trends in quantity surveying in relation to civil engineering and building construction, especially the probabilities and risks involved with a view to ensuring professionalism among the practitioners for national development.
