The founder, Afe Babalola University, Ado-Ekiti, (ABUAD), Chief Afe Babalola, has advised the president-elect, Bola Tinubu, to first seek debt forgiveness for Nigeria when he assumes office on May 29th, 2023, for the country to move forward.
Specifically, Babalola said the best thing he would expect the in-coming president to do was to learn from former President Olusegun Obasanjo, who spent two to three years of his administration going round the world to beg for debt forgiveness for the nation.
The lawyer/educationist gave the advice at the weekend, while answering questions from newsmen at the end of a lecture titled: “Smart Infrastructure: Catalyst for Sustainable Development,” held at the Alfa Belgore Hall of the university by Prof. Bamidele Adebisi, of the University of Manchester.
The elder statesman insisted that no investor would be willing to invest in a country where they cannot even repay their debts and not to talk of the interest owed.
“Have you ever heard of a man who would be stupid enough to go and invest in a bankrupt country?
“The president- elect should learn from Former President Olusegun Obasanjo who spent his first two years in office to be going around to seek for debt forgiveness,” the Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN) said.
The ABUAD founder who frowned at Nigeria’s high debt profile said, “we owed trillions of dollars and we are still borrowing more even as the present administration has few days to go.
“We learnt that the in-coming president went to look for those who will invest here,” he said, stressing that we the country’s weak currency, there was need to, “seek for debt forgiveness first before any other thing.”
The Chancellor, said smart Infrastructure depends on availability of necessary infrastructure itself, which ABUAD was doing already.
He said: “The purpose of the lecture is to change, promote and revolutionalise the society which we are doing here.”
Babalola, charged Nigerian professors on the need for quality research, saying if a research is solid and marketable, a lot of industries would seek to acquire them.
“The issues raised in their journals will be marketable. You can make millions and billions from it,” he added.
Adebisi, whose lecture was on smart infrastructure, said technology has come to stay.
“We can use technology as a tool for societal development,” he added.
