Fashola warns VCs to stop giving honourary degrees randomly

• Rejected 17 honourary degrees as a Governor

Minister of Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola had charged vice chancellors (VCs) in Nigeria to stop giving honourary degrees randomly.

Fashola gave the charge during a meeting with the Committee of Vice Chancellors/Association of Vice Chancellors of Nigerian Universities (CVC/AVCNU) recently.

The minister narrated how he turned down 17 honorary degrees from Nigerian universities, stressing that various institutions came to offer him honorary degrees when he was governor of Lagos State for eight years.

He bemoaned the proliferation and abuse of Honorary Degrees by universities in the country, adding that in his eight-year tenure as Governor of Lagos State and Visitor at LASU, one of the things his administration did was to put on hold the award of any Honorary Degree for about two to three years.

Fashola said, “We said, look we are going to be different and for two or three years we did not award any Honorary Degree because truly the idea of Honorary Degree is an important building block of society and once we throw those blocks away or make them unviable then the purpose for it is lost.

“In my eight years in office I had 17 offers and I didn’t take one. I told them to wait until when I was out of office and if they still find me worthy they should then come. And when I was out of office only one came back.

“The point I want to make is that we have to encourage our children to work hard. What have these honorees of the universities done to deserve the honour? What of those who have become undeserving, will you go back and tell them to return the degrees, that they don’t deserve it anymore?”

Fashola further charged the Committee to assemble the many professors of History in the universities and allot to them the task to produce such a version that would be a true History of Nigeria, acceptable by all Nigerians, including the Historians themselves.

“It is a place where young boys and girls transit to becoming young men and women and that is where their characters are finally shaped in readiness to take over the leadership of the country.”

The minister cautioned that as overseers of the institutions, the Vice Chancellors have daunting tasks to accomplish.

“Somebody like me, I am a product of an investment of those who set up the University of Benin. Also there are many Nigerians who, like me, are products of that act of faith that happened in the 1970s.

“I sit here today, and there are Senators, Senate Presidents and so many other professionals who were also products of that investment. And what is true of the University of Benin is also true of all other universities across the country”, he added.

Fashola, therefore charged the VCs to be tactful in the award of honourary degrees and give only deserving people, not those whose achievement is the occupation of a political office.