By Admin
The Founder and Chancellor of Afe Babalola University, Ado-Ekiti (ABUAD), Aare Afe Babalola, has charged newly admitted students of the institution to dream big, embrace discipline and strive to surpass the achievements of their predecessors.
The legal icon gave the charge in the Institution during the general orientation programme for fresh students of the 2026/2027 academic session.
The orientation programme is part of ABUAD’s schedule for fresh undergraduates, who resumed in batches between August 31 and September 2, 2026, with lectures commencing on September 7.
Welcoming the students to the university, Babalola described ABUAD as an institution established to provide quality academic, leadership and entrepreneurial training, while preparing graduates to make meaningful contributions to society.
Babalola also appreciated parents and guardians for choosing the institution for the education and training of their children, assuring them that the university would remain committed to developing students academically, in leadership and entrepreneurship.
His words, “We need more of Popoolas from among you. We want a repeat of all these attainments by your predecessors by you. If those before you could do it, you can do it better and faster. The sky is not the limit; it is the take-off point for you.
“I want to thank our dear parents for choosing and sending their children/wards to ABUAD to be taught, moulded and mentored into stars and mega stars like those who have passed through this citadel of Academic Excellence before you.
“We remain grateful that they have looked in our direction as the place to have their children/wards trained out of the several Federal, State, Faith-based and Private Universities in the country today. I want to assure our dear parents that we will not disappoint them. At the end of the students’ sojourn here, all of us – the parents, teachers and the students themselves – will be happy because of the quantum of Academic, Leadership and Entrepreneurial training that we would have inculcated into the students.
“I am bold to say and without any iota of equivocation that this is the University to be, a University where dreams are rapidly translated into reality, a university devoid of strike actions, a university with predictable and reliable Academic calendar, a university that has its own power supply system, a university where all the students are resident on campus!
“One may be tempted to ask what informed you to choose ABUAD as your preferred University. Without being told, I know that each of you has his/her own peculiar reason for choosing ABUAD.
“That notwithstanding, I want to know from one student from each of the six undergraduate Colleges: Engineering, Law, Medicine & Health Sciences, Sciences and Social & Management Science as well as Pharmacy.
“As I have often said, ABUAD is a child of circumstances. I have often realized and appreciated that “Education is Power”. But this notwithstanding, what is the situation like in our country today? For many years, Nigerian Universities have waned at a geometric rate in quality, substance and prestige. Those of your teachers here who attended and taught in any Nigerian university in the 60’s would easily appreciate the extent of dilapidation of necessary physical structures and facilities in many of our universities today. A combination of infrastructural decay, lack of adequate funding, dearth of qualitative practical training curriculum and inability to attract the best teaching minds have all combined to make Nigerian Universities to be haven to undisciplined students who often engage in all form of vices including substance abuse. It is for these same reasons that many of them end up roaming the streets without gaining employment.
“It was my attempt to correct some of these ills bedeviling our educational landscape that made me establish ABUAD to be an example of what a university, probably so called, should be”.
