At anytime, the relevance of any university, as a citadel of learning, ivory tower and centre of excellence is hinged on its ability to satisfactorily fulfill its tripartite mandates of teaching, research and outreach (community service). With a virile outreach, the institution is able to foster the town and the gown relations such that its presence in the locality or particular environment is mutually beneficial.
It is on this premise that our ivory towers would always strive to be up to task in the scheme of things as an important component of a nation that is constantly searching and producing knowledge. Such initiatives recently drew my attention on the need to sustain such outreach programmes in a dynamic society. Universities should always strike a balance between teaching, learning, research and community activities.
From the Federal University of Agriculture, Abeokuta, Ogun State example, various facets of the institution are engaged in one form of outreach or another. Of interest is the recent community-based workshop that was meant to create awareness and improve nutritional status of rural populace. Explaining the importance of the workshop, one of the coordinators said participants would utilise the information and knowledge gained from the programme for betterment of farm-families.
As part of its mandate at facilitating the participatory capabilities of women, farm-families and secondary school youths in the university mandate area in Southwest, Nigeria, in a bid to promoting the development of the farmers, their families, their communities, and the nation at large. Others benefits include pointing-out the causes and prevention of sudden deaths across the life span; creating nutritional awareness and promotion of healthy nutritional habits among farm-families; promoting behavioural changes on hygienic practices and strategies to attaining optimum growth; development of school children; and encouraging peer-to-peer education among school children alongside their parents.
Dr. Modupe Oladejo-Alghazal in the presentation titled, “Causes and Prevention of Sudden Deaths in Farm-families”, across the life span (childhood illness, gyneacological emergencies, communicable and non-communicable diseases), advised the women-folk to always eat balanced diet, rest, avoid heavy work, practice family planning, ante-natal care, ensure child delivery at standard hospitals and avoid sleeping under treated insecticide nets, identifying the causes of sudden death to include bleeding, hypertension in pregnancy, infection in pregnancy, obstructed labour, malaria and anaemia while common diseases include measles, dysentery, polio, chicken pox, tuberculosis and malaria.
In another presentation titled, “Farm-families’ Nutritional Awareness and Hygienic Practices as Strategies to Enhance Optimum Growth and Development of School Children’’, Dr. Catherine Oladoyinbo, appealed to parents to ensure that they live in clean and healthy environment in the course of preparing their food while listing out the benefits of eating balance diet and at the right proportion to include: having rapid growth, increased immunity from diseases and infections, sharp brain development and longevity of life.
As an attestation of the impact of the various programmes in promoting outreach initiatives, a certificate of merit was conferred on the institution as a result of its impressive performance that are useful for healthy living and also for conducting sound vocational training for participants. In a related development, the institution equally carried out an enlightenment programme for outstanding graduates on the rudiments and procedures of getting overseas postgraduate education and scholarships scheme in selected countries.
The supervisor of the programme disclosed that the programme was to aid the students at fulfilling their dreams of studying for their postgraduate programmes abroad. According to her, the programme witnessed an impressive turnout as 150 graduates were invited, out of a total of 500 that registered for the training, saying that the programme would be an eye-opener for the students as they were taught the nitty-gritty of searching for foreign scholarship and applying for them.Many other activities have been embarked upon in line with what our centres of excellence should be doing to advance the lot of the nation.
University administrators should ensure that the necessary atmosphere is put in place to make the society feel the impact of citadels of learning the more. Such programmes should be well funded, communication channels with host community should be effective and resource persons should be carefully selected to make the desired impact while the necessary evaluation should be carried to ascertain the level of success or otherwise of such interventions. Our universities should truly be more responsive and seen to be actively alive to meeting the needs of the society. Many of the participants expressed their gratitude to the opportunity given them to take part in the programme.
Now, my questions are: what do we need to do to get our agriculture right in Nigeria? When are going to be able to feed ourselves in the land of abundance? Certainly, there is need for massive investment in agriculture in order to attract serious young persons into farming. I hope that when another opportunity comes up, issues of storage, preservation and processing of raw materials for our produce would be addressed. By that, agriculture would certainly remain the way out to achieving economic prosperity, food security and meaningful outreach in the nation
