Dr. Tunji Olowolafe, Founding father of the Tunji Olowolafe Basis (TOF), has referred to as on Nigerian universities to open analysis to extra folks, take a look at long-held ideals with clinical rigour and elevate discoveries out of the laboratory into the economic system.
Olowolafe, who made the decision on the Obafemi Awolowo College’s (OAU) sixty fifth anniversary in Ile-Ife, Osun State, whilst talking at the theme, “Selling Analysis Excellence and Innovation in Postgraduate Research: Charting the Long term,” reframed analysis because the disciplined dependancy of correcting a country’s direction in keeping with proof. He described the postgraduate faculty because the highbrow engine room of a country, the place society sends its sharpest minds to problem standard knowledge and insist truthful, data-driven solutions.
His first technique referred to as for opening the gates of study previous, wider and extra flexibly. He prompt OAU to make its group of workers colleges benchmarks for Africa, with science, generation and synthetic intelligence on the core of the curriculum.
He pointed to the Basis’s Gbemisola Olowolafe Memorial Neighborhood Secondary Faculty in Are Ekiti, which opened in September 2025 with 100 scholars and now has greater than 170, along an ICT centre educating synthetic intelligence (AI), coding, graphic design and Mandarin, with instructors educating are living from Beijing thru a Starlink connection.
“The postgraduate researchers of 2040 are sitting in number one study rooms lately,” he mentioned.
He additionally puzzled whether or not each street to postgraduate analysis will have to run thru a four-year stage, inviting universities to acknowledge prior finding out and demonstrated experience with out reducing requirements. With most effective about a million of the 2 million UTME applicants admitted in 2025, he argued that versatile, virtual find out about will have to develop into the usual fashion, since a virtual campus wishes no bodily acreage. This builds at the Basis’s Mission Digi-Train, which is coaching instructional group of workers at Ekiti State College (EKSU) for virtual talent.
His 2nd technique prompt researchers to check what society believes. Somewhat than brushing aside indigenous data with out investigation or protecting it with out validation, he referred to as for rigorous trying out, bringing up Chinese language scientist Tu Youyou, whose find out about of a centuries-old natural treatment produced the malaria remedy artemisinin and a Nobel Prize. He prolonged the similar theory to nationwide historical past, together with delicate chapters such because the Civil Conflict.
“She neither rejected custom nor permitted it. She examined it,” he mentioned.
The 3rd technique taken with pushing analysis out of the laboratory and at once into the economic system. Dr. Olowolafe advocated college promotion constructions that praise patents, business merchandise and solved business issues along conventional magazine publications.
“Analysis is entire most effective when it leaves the laboratory and improves lives,” he mentioned.
Pointing to OAU’s remarkable tech pedigree, together with Flutterwave and Moniepoint based by means of its graduates, he challenged the worldwide alumni neighborhood to scale up their monetary, institutional and mentorship toughen for analysis tenfold.
To toughen this imaginative and prescient, the Basis will set up a solar energy gadget for the Postgraduate School, supply a digital finding out and oral protection facility and modernize the School Boardroom. TOF can even fund pilot research on a case-by-case foundation and sponsor coaching in grant writing and donor compliance, running with OAU’s Central Place of work of Analysis and Development Place of work.
“Our ambition will have to transcend offering infrastructure to construction establishments that may generate data and draw in world analysis investment. By way of strengthening the capability of our universities, we will enlarge alternatives for our folks and place Nigeria to compete extra successfully within the world data economic system,” he famous.
Thru those concepts and commitments, the Tunji Olowolafe Basis continues to advance its broader ambition of strengthening the establishments, abilities and alternatives that toughen Nigeria’s long-term building. Its paintings throughout training, virtual finding out and analysis capability displays a sustained dedication to equipping establishments and the following era with the gear to compete and thrive in an an increasing number of knowledge-driven international.
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