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Expert wants government to engage intellectuals in national development

By Eno-Abasi Sunday    
21 July 2016   |   1:02 am
Professor of Cropping Systems, Philip Adetiloye, has charged the Federal Government to employ the services of intellectuals and sundry high-level manpower from diverse disciplines ...
 Philip Adetiloye

Philip Adetiloye

Professor of Cropping Systems, Philip Adetiloye, has charged the Federal Government to employ the services of intellectuals and sundry high-level manpower from diverse disciplines in its efforts to rev up national development.

According to him, it was only in so doing that the steady drift down all development indices that the country is experiencing would be put paid to.

Adetiloye, was recently selected by the J. W. Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board for the Fulbright Award, administered by the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs of the United States Department of State, and the Council for International Exchange of Scholars in New York, as a Scholar-in-Residence for 2016, at Lincoln University, United States.

He is also a recipient of research awards and fellowships from the Ford Foundation, United States Agency for International Affairs (USAID), the Federal Ministry of Science and Technology, and the World Bank-assisted research grant, under the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development.

The university teacher, who is of the Department of Plant Physiology and Crop Production (PPCP), College of Plant Science and Crop Production (COLPLANT), Federal University of Agriculture, Abeokuta (FUNAAB), fingered poor funding of research as the bane of development in the country, and also attributed the low pace of research work to the dearth of basic infrastructure such as electricity and water saying, “Most lecturers fund their research with their salaries. Of course, the regular problems of lack of electricity and water on campus and at home, has seriously affected academic productivity and increased work stress…”

He described as lamentable, a situation where the Federal Government and its agencies pay lip service to the development of the education sector, instead of supporting it in order for the country to inch its way into the comity of industrialised nations.

“What is more painful is that Nigerian government institutions and ministries do not value research and they do not value the inventions and innovations from research,” Adetiloye cried, urging up and coming researchers to strive to create the ideal environment that would make them intellectually efficient and productive, regardless of the situation and environment in which they find themselves.

The don said that his extensive research on cropping systems had demonstrated that traditional multiple cropping systems were more profitable, more sustainable and more stable to environmental changes than mono-cultural cropping.

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