Nigerian education news

Seventy-nine-year-old retired Catholic Bishop of Lagos, Anthony Cardinal Okojie, did not look his age as he strolled round the premises of the Augustine University, Epe, Lagos last Wednesday.

From the administrative block, medical centre to the cafeteria, among other places, that the former Catholic See of Lagos visited, he was in high spirits, inspecting the facilities at the newly approved university.

For him, what the church in Lagos desired some seven years ago has finally come to fruition. Okojie, on October 21, 2008, had, while addressing a press conference, declared that the church in Lagos would bequeath a lasting tertiary institution to the city and humanity.

The National Universities Commission on March 5, 2015 gave the university alongside four others the nod to operate as universities. In fact, by this September, according to Okojie, the university must have finally taken off with its expected first set of students.

Of course, the huge investment on the premises is more than enough to tickle his excitement. In his thinking, the structures on the ground in the school are no decorative toys. They are facilities that will enable the authorities to provide Nigerians with holistic education.

He said, “We have been thinking of helping the Federal Government in educating the citizens, especially the youth, and we discovered that there is a big lacuna in the kind of education that our youths are getting today. So, the Catholic Church of the Archdiocese of Lagos feels it is something good to put a tertiary institution that will help to train Nigerians and give them holistic education.