By Our Reporter
Professor of History, Toyin Falola, has called on Nigerian universities to start running the study of intellectual development and witchcraft as degree-awarding courses combined with science and economics.
Falolu stated this while delivering the University of Lagos (UNILAG) 54th Convocation lecture on “Decolonising African Higher Education for Transformational Development” on Monday, January 15.
According to the Nigerian Tribune, the African intellectual legend also recommended the use of indigenous languages to teach and interact among lecturers and students.
He argued that the colonial authorities did not set up the African educational system for enlightenment nor the advancement and benefits of the colonies.
He added that it was designed to achieve colonial masters’ economic and governance ambitions and aspirations
Prof Falola said after political independence, African education is still designed to perpetuate and advance the economic and political objectives of European countries, using the elites to facilitate such.
He urged the National Universities Commission (NUC) as a regulatory body to give more freedom to universities to design their curricula based on their peculiarities.
A mathematics lecturer at the Lagos State University (LASU), Dr. Aminat Olawunmi Ige, emerged as the Overall Best Graduating Doctoral Thesis Award Winner at UNILAG 54th Convocation.
Ige’s thesis, titled "O-Metric Spaces: A Novel Unification and Generalisation of Metric-Type Spaces with Applications in Fixed Point Theory," was adjudged the best in the entire university for the 2022–2023 academic session.