…as university don urges FG to harness natural vegetation to provide power, preserve water
From WOLE BALOGUN, Ado-Ekiti
The Federal University Oye-Ekiti, (FUOYE)’s Faculty of Sciences has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), with South Africa (S. A)’s Vaal University of Technology (VUT), to enhance research, exchange of academic programmes and capacity building among staff and students of both institutions, among others.
The development was a concluding phase of the 2019 FUOYE International Science Conference, organised by the Faculty of sciences under the leadership of the Dean, Prof. Olayide Lawal, a Professor of Industrial and Macromolecular Chemistry. The conference, which held for two days, was themed: ” Innovation and Advancement in Nanonscience and Nanotechnology.
Lead papers were delivered by Prof. Elizer Bobby Naidoo of Vaal University and Dr. Adekunle Adeyemi of FUOYE, department of mechatronics.
Naidoo, who delivered a lecture entitled :” Nanoscience: Application and Techniques, decried that industrial activities have led to a continuous shrinking of clean water, signalling a gradual extinction of the human race if not checked. He posited the application of nanoscience as elixir to the environmental challenge.
Adeyemi, whose lecture was:” Advancement in Technology in the New Millennium: Mechatronics’ stand at a glance,” dwelled on the achievements of mechatronics and particularly the various research breakthroughs in the field that have fetched garlands for FUOYE in national and international academic competitions.
Speaking about the development and the vision of the institution about it, the Vice-Chancellor, Prof. Kayode Shoremekun, promised to extend the collaboration with the MoU to other faculties and programmes to ensure widespread enhancement of human capacity among the staff and students of the institution.
The VC, who was represented by both Professors Rasaki Ojo Bakare, Dean of Post Graduate Studies, at the conference and
Prof. Babatope Alabadan, Dean of faculty of Engineering at the signing of the MoU, said:” the signing of the MoU is an eye opener and our university is going bigger and wider: collaborating with a bigger university in South Africa is a welcome development. It will not only be useful in faculty of sciences but it will affect the whole university. It will soon be expanded to cover all other programmes in the University.”
Speaking about his impression about the Nigerian environment and the opportunities provided by the signing of the MoU, Prof. Naidoo said:”The FUOYE environment looks nice with a lot of green around you. what I have observed is that you have problems with energy because I see that your power goes off very often. But I know that you have a huge natural vegetation here which can be harnessed to produce alternative energy and water preservation.
” The MoU will enable us to be exchanging both staff and students in research works in academic programmes such as Water Treatment, Alternative Energy, Biotechnology, and for FUOYE staff to obtain higher qualifications from VUT, that is the resources that we have in our university which FUOYE do not have. Also, we will also learn from our cultures.
” There will be widespread of knowledge that FUOYE will be getting from our university using the facilities that we have which FUOYE don’t have. The way we teach and the way FUOYE teach we will learn from each other and this will support the idea of broadening our spectrum within ourselves as Africans rather than going abroad for such,” he said.
Professor Lawal also spoke about the gains of the MoU, saying:” The major objective of this collaboration is to extend our research tentacles to other universities, this time, with Vaal University of Technology because it is a university that has very a strong reputation in terms of research, we are targeting opportunities for exchange of students and staff and making our students to go there for research works.
” We are of the opinion that once this happen, there will be transfer of knowledge for enchanced productivity. It is going to be a win win situation, the benefit will be to enhance human capacity in the sense that we know that here the learning facilities are not so available for research but over there they have huge facilities for research : where we are deficient, we can send our samples for analysis or go over there to do the analysis.
We are also trying to see the opportunity of publishing together if the research involves both universities.
” That we should support sharing knowledge within Africa is a very good position and the advantage is that there are certain problems that are peculiar to Africa and which may not be within the knowledge of the western world, but because we are co- African countries, we understand ourselves. Also, it will be easier to apply for Visa to travel to South Africa than traveling to Europe or other western world.
” There is an aspect of research that is very crucial: it is the dissemination of research findings, if such findings are not properly disseminated, it adds no value to the society. So, we organize conferences to showcase these findings and share them with other scholars from other universities in order to establish a synergy to facilitate further research. It is a kind of human capacity enhancement, it provides the opportunity for younger ones to see how the senior academics present their papers. We also are using this forum to showcase a lot of research breakthroughs that are happening in FUOYE particularly, in the faculty of sciences. Our university is a fast growing one and we have a lot to promote this university.”
