Chief Afe Babalola has disclosed that he sold his properties in Ibadan,
Lagos, Abuja and London as well as emptied his bank account to establish
the Afe Babalola University Ado-Ekiti (ABUAD).
The university is one of the very best in Nigeria today.
The founder of ABUAD stated this at the weekend
during the closing ceremony of the 2018 Afe Babalola University
Agriculture Expo (ABUA-EX) where 48 farmers across the 16 councils of
the state received N6 million from the legal icon to expand the scope of
farming.
The Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN) described himself as a fulfilled man, having succeeded in touching lives positively.
While
warning on the consequences of neglecting agriculture, the university
administrator said that Nigeria risks becoming a beggarly nation by
taking farming for granted.
He lamented that the youths were not
interested in agriculture, noting that they were already having the
wrong notion that farmers belong to the lowest rungs of the social
ladder.
Appealing to the Federal Government to re-establish the
moribund Education Bank and rename it Education and Entrepreneurial
Bank, for undergraduates to have access to loans for their education and
go into enterprises after graduation, to reduce unemployment and
hunger.
“It is imperative that we revive agriculture to ensure
that Nigeria regains its lost glory in that all-important realm and in
the overall interest of the people, as any nation that pays little or no
attention to agriculture does so at its own peril of becoming a
beggarly nation.
“When I started, virtually all the courses were subscribed to by admission-seekers, with the exemption of agriculture.
“Even
the second year, we had less than 10 students and then thought of how
to give incentives to our youths. This made me to reduce the tuition fee
by 50 per cent; and if you graduate with good grades in the College of
Agriculture, you will get N250,000 to go into farming, because I believe
in the slogan ‘no farmers, no nation’.
