Women Academics From Nigeria

"We need to begin to talk to our children about equity from home; if we do that, our children will grow up with it and affect the society positively."

"Significantly, she epitomises the finest and most dedicated intellectual culture of our beautiful nation. She signifies centuries of cutting-edge scholasticism, the foundation of which our great forefathers laid."

"As an electoral officer, I have never in my life participated in any election but duty came calling."

"I didn’t start today. I stand here before God and Jesus Christ. I have never defrauded anyone. Under me, votes must count, under me, the people’s mandate must be upheld"

"They came with their threats, they came with their money, they came with their intimidation, I remained unshakable."

"I have never in my life participated in an election. But duty came calling. I made enquiries from Abuja, and I said ‘if I perish, I perish."

"Under me, votes must count, under me, the people’s mandate must be upheld."

"I shall stand squarely and unapologetically on these principles. The people’s votes and mandate shall stand"

"The pastor and the mother in me will not permit me to do anything that will adversely affect the future of our children."

"My focus will be to intensify capacity-building and staff development and expand the frontiers of research and learning while ensuring that students have a better learning experience in FUTA."

"I Ensure that the gains of FUTA in the past years are sustained and improved upon. * The evolution of new strategies to secure the future, while delivering a rebranded FUTA."

"Currently, no programme of the university has been denied accreditation,” the don noted."

"Provision of lecture halls and laboratories with ultra-modern facilities, the institution of prizes and awards for outstanding students and staff, provision of students hostels under Build-Operate-Transfer Agreement; and provision of buses for student field trips.”"

"In spite of our modest achievements, the university still requires enormous support towards actualising its noble vision. In that regard, the university would deeply appreciate generous support in the way of an endowment of professorial chairs in various disciplines to be named after the donors, donation of laboratory equipment and other learning materials, and award of doctoral and post-doctoral scholarships and fellowships for staff."

"The resort to voting to select a Vice-Chancellor is alien to the law (Statute) guiding the selection process."

"As a university of technology, we must be prepared to deal with emerging questions that we did not know had to be answered. The COVID-19 experience showed that there is a lot of ground yet uncovered."

"The long-term plan I have for the university is for the university to be globally competitive and highly ranked. My short-term plan is to put in place policies and that would make us become a globally competitive university."

"I think one of the greatest achievements I would like to be associated with is the peace, unity, oneness and purpose on campus. I derive joy from the fact that people are working in a cordial environment and anybody can have access to the vice-chancellor."

"As the first female vice-chancellor of the university, it comes with a lot of responsibility and expectations. Many people want to see what a female vice-chancellor can do. There are also high expectations from people who think the university is too complex for a woman to run."

"I am not sure if I have taken any complex decision yet. Perhaps, the slight increase we recently introduced to school fees could count as one. It was not easy considering the economic situation in the country. Everyone is hard up, yet the university needs to keep moving along with other contemporary universities."

"The VC is also responsible for administrative action and is the chief financial officer of the university. When things go wrong financially, the VC is held responsible. Those are the tripartite responsibilities of a vice-chancellor."

"I can assure you that the government is doing something towards revitalising public universities."

"We create the bias from the cradle when we begin to tell our children the chores that are meant for boys and those that are for girls."

"Now what we need to do is to teach them to use their power to their own advantage. We tell them that they should not continue to queue behind the men; when a woman comes out, line-up behind her for a change and wait. Do not look at her as that little child whose naming ceremony you attended, and who now wants to become a governor. Rather, look at her positively, because she knows where the shoe pinches. And when it comes to women’s empowerment, look at them as individuals who can perform rather than a member of a class that has to be kept behind. It is when we have succeeded at this experiment that in the next election, we shall do better."

"The corruption we see in the examinations is a ‘carry-over’ effect of the overall moral and ethical decay in the larger society. It does not help that the Nigeria nation believes in, and insists on paper qualification, rather than the possession of actual knowledge. I have argued it again and again that, as long as we believe in the paper and not the knowledge; that we want students with second class upper division (even if they have cheated to do so), the students will go all out to get the paper qualification. At interviews, it is obvious that many of the certificates being paraded have not been merited by the people laying claim to them."

"Anywhere in the world, if you create a good environment, people will excel. But our country continues to provide insufficient funding for nearly everything that is necessary. So it’s a vicious circle. We began to notice a decline when successive Nigerian governments no longer felt that education was important, and therefore gave it the least attention. And I say this with all seriousness. With the military governments in power it was not considered all that important to have education. Many in the government itself were in fact young and did not value education, because they viewed their more senior colleagues as poor, and preferred to become millionaires."

"A great deal has to be invested as a way of correcting the system. There have been so many wrongs arising from bad management; we all now know that the same people who complain about student violence might actually be fueling that violence to avoid attention being paid to their own non performance. There is no water, no light, no accommodation, and so on and so forth. The environment is not conducive for studies. There are no books in the library, so the students are idle, and there is nothing to occupy them. Some students really want to study, but all these things I’ve mentioned are immensely discouraging."

"Ah…the admission system is faulty, as far as I’m concerned. Students are admitted and nothing is known about their background…where they are coming from. Many of these students have been through the system of forgery; many of them cannot pass five credits in WASC. Yet they pretend to have scored 275 in JME; it’s absolutely deceitful."

"Some farmers force fruits to ripen in different ways with different chemicals; I noticed it and called the attention of NAFDAC, but nothing happened."

"The quality of what people supply affects the quality of what people buy and some farmers are willing to do anything to sell their products."

"Economic considerations are a major determinant of the extent to which women are involved in farming as against processing and trading."

"A ranking of the socio-economic activities of the women studied indicated that their most important activity was the care of children, followed by house-keeping and then trading."

"...can appropriately be conceptualized as a balance, or even the equilibrium, between supply and demand and can be for the individual, family or household, a country such as Nigeria, a region such as Sub-Saharan Africa or even the continent of Africa."

"An individual, household, country or region is food secure if its food supply balances, is equivalent to, or is in equilibrium with, the demand for it."

"Unlike food security, the equilibrium of traditional agriculture is not a dynamic but a static one, which has remained relatively stable for a fairly long time."

"There is the need to explore the field more and sponsor research on epidemiological study. We need to know why more people are dying of renal failure, liver cancer and kidney problems when they do not indulge in attitude or have conditions that expose them to the diseases."

"No country will help you to develop your own country. If you are getting a research grant, it must be one that favours the country funding it. For us to solve our environmental and health issues, research must be funded by Nigeria. Most of the funds we get are from outside the country but they determine what they want you to research on. They are tied to conditions. Most of them will not solve the basic needs of Nigeria. Only Nigerians can help Nigeria achieve greater development."

"“Science happened to me, but passion is what has kept my love for science burning”."

"Women are also confronted with challenges common to all researchers. These include poor infrastructure, access to cutting-edge research tools and funding to carry out research. Additionally, early career female researchers don’t have many female role models for motivation and mentorship."

"Women in science do seem to find it difficult to be recognised and achieve academic excellence. This is particularly true in sub-Saharan Africa, due to cultural limitations and bias. Within the Nigerian environment marriage, parenthood and other gender-assigned roles – such as primary caregivers for the elderly – take precedence over career and education."

"Veterinary medicine has an increasingly important role to play in addressing the global challenges of the 21st century based on our societal contributions to Animal Welfare, Biomedical Research, Animal Health, Production, and Conservation of Species, as well as Safeguarding the Health of Humans. Worldwide the profession is facing challenges in maintaining the economic sustainability of veterinary education and practice, evolving veterinary service to meet changing societal needs; in addition, the populace, policymakers, and even medical professionals are frequently unaware of how veterinary medicine fundamentally supports both animal and human health."

"A typical African man is the man who must be the head, and must be heard. But we are beginning to shift a little, as women executives are getting the rightful positions and the right respect that they deserve, as much as such respect should also be given to the men."

"The student-to-lecturer ratio must also improve. There are lecturers who teach up to 6,000 students in a class, and they have to mark the scripts manually, but they are not paid commensurate to the hard work that they put in."

"Many say that the standard of education (in the country) has fallen but we would soon find out that has not really been so. In spite of all the challenges, it is still the educational system that produced the manpower that is driving this country."

"Things have changed and everything is getting dynamic– our society and institutions are dynamic. We are now in the digital age and things have taken a different dimension."

"I think for anyone who gets into a position, not only does one want to fill the shoes of those who have done well in that post, one also wants to surpass their achievements."

"I think for everyone who has risen to the rank of professor in a university, it is not always about whether one dreams or not, it’s always there that one day, one would want to get to the apex of one’s career, which, of course, is becoming the vice chancellor of the University of Benin."

"I think yes, we may have challenges in certain areas and we are not quite there with technology yet but this is a digital era and I don’t think we are doing badly. We can only do better than we’re doing right now."

"Food security and healthy living is the ability of every citizen to have regular access to enough food to meet his or her nutritional requirements for a healthy, active and reproductive life."

"Food accessibility continues to be a challenge and nutrition a major contributor to health prospects and choices."