Obasanjo asks universities to find solution to Boko Haram insurgency, terrorism

Former President Olusegun Obasanjo, on Monday,
challenged Nigerian universities to come up with
creative solution to Boko Haram and violent extremism
threatening the peace in Africa and in the World.
He, accordingly, urged the Association of West African
Universities (AWAU) to take leadership in the quest of
delivering a curriculum and research methodologies
that would foster a culture of peace and human
security in Africa and the world.
Obasanjo, who was represented by a former Executive
Secretary of the National Universities Commission
(NUC), Professor Peter Okebukola, spoke at the third
annual conference and general meeting of AWAU, held
at Nigerian Turkish Nile University, Abuja.
While condemning the recent attack by extremists that
left many people dead in Paris, France, Obasanjo said
the West Africa sub-region had not been spared by the
scourge of Boko Haram.
He said: "Peace in Africa and in the world is getting
increasingly compromised through violent extremism to
which our universities should rise stoutly to defend and
find solutions. We need our universities to come up
with creative solutions."
He identified curriculum irrelevance and poor research
culture as some of the challenges facing university
education not only in Nigeria, but also in entire African
continent.
Obasanjo, who disclosed that graduate unemployment
rate in West Africa averaged 39 per cent according to a
report in 2014, said there was the need to revitalise
high education in Africa towards emergence of strong
and vibrant institutions profoundly engaged in
fundamental and development-oriented research and
teaching.