Beyond Authorities Funding: Oba Otudeko’s prolonged-time length reach to training investment  

By Festus Okonkwo

In July 1947, Kenneth Mellanby arrived in Ibadan to envision what would turned into Nigeria’s first university. He stumbled on, as he later recorded, “no college, no building, no pupil physique, no workers, no governing physique.” Six months later, 104 college students walked onto a temporary residing at Eleyele and began their analysis at the University College, constructed from nothing, in a nation that did no longer yet formally exist.

Seventy-seven years later, that founding wager stays intelligent. Nigeria now has 309 universities. Extra than two million younger Nigerians notice for admission slots yearly; approximately 700,000 are admitted. Federal universities count on the Tertiary Education Belief Fund, financed by a 2% training tax on corporate profits, receiving approximately ?2.86 billion each in 2025, a resolve that covers staffing, upkeep, and the rising strain of pupil ask.

In December 2025, for the length of the Nigeria Education Forum (NEF) held in Abuja, Vice President Kashim Shettima made the level that university administrators absorb prolonged understood: the financing burden can now no longer relaxation on govt on my own. University administrators absorb tried to court docket private sector funding for administrative programmes, but after they make, a smartly-diagnosed cycle plays out. A pledge is made at a effectively-attended ceremony, land is disbursed, a project is commissioned, and expectations are raised. Alternatively, over time, absorbing priorities, funding constraints, and management changes impede development, and the promised project stalls.

Dr. Oba Otudeko, CFR, recognised this actuality about three decades within the past.

Dr. Otudeko’s mannequin departs from that cycle. His interventions are defined by completion and continuity. That is evident in how capital is deployed. Thru the Oba Otudeko Foundation, this reach has been expressed via a sustained and structured programme of investments in training. In place of episodic interventions, the focal level has been on building institutional capacity over time.

The investment portfolio spans infrastructure, curriculum endowments, vocational practising, scholarships, and institutional capacity building throughout more than one Nigerian institutions. Each intervention is designed for longevity, reflecting a mannequin that prioritises durability over immediacy. The foundation operates as the starting up platform, however the underlying philosophy is one in all prolonged-time length, system-oriented investment.

Investments embody the Honeywell Auditorium at the Lagos Industry College, Pan-Atlantic University. LBS holds accreditation from the Affiliation to Advance Collegiate Faculties of Industry (AACSB), the first institution in West Africa to make it, a used met by fewer than 6% of enterprise colleges worldwide. The auditorium hosts lectures, govt programmes, and convocations for an institution that presents a fundamental share of Nigeria’s private sector management pipeline. Dr. Otudeko selected to position capital in a facility of that calibre, at an institution of that standing, and that resolution plan the sample for the investments that adopted.

One other valuable investment is the 2,400-square-metre administrative complex for Olabisi Onabanjo University in Prior to now-Iwoye, Ogun Affirm. Dr. Otudeko served as Chancellor of OOU from 2001 to 2010. The investment became once made impartial of any formal obligation, reflecting a constant precept: commitments defined by prolonged-time length standpoint rather than position and accomplished with continuity in tips.

At  Olabisi Onabanjo University, the Foundation’s give a rob to involves both the endowment of the Centre for Entrepreneurial Experiences and the supply of a 2,400-square-metre administrative complex. The connection between the 2 is functional rather than sequential. Endowment sustains programmes; infrastructure permits starting up.

When addressed in tandem, they pass an institution previous growth against capability. A identical good judgment is visible at the secondary stage. At All Saints’ College, Ibadan, donated within the early days of the Foundation, the governmentblock addressed a constraint classic throughout many Nigerian colleges: the diversion of research room situation for administrative employ. By consolidating operations, the intervention effectively returned studying situation to school students. One other valuable contribution involves the donation of a College students’ Cafeteria to Bells University of Abilities, Ota, Ogun Affirm.

At some level of every institution he has supported, Dr. Otudeko targets the same thing: the insist, practical barrier that determines whether a pupil completes or drops out.

Dr. Otudeko’s reach to training has formed how Honeywell Community operates. He constructed the Honeywell Excellence Programme in 1993 as a Honeywell Community initiative, and it has delivered more than three decades of management and graduate administration practising unbroken by currency crises, political transitions, or a world pandemic. The programme shows a resolution Dr. Otudeko made at the organisational stage: that capability sort is a enterprise characteristic, constructed into how the firm operates and resourced to compare.

Thru the Foundation, he builds the institutions. Thru Honeywell Community, he identifies and empowers the individuals that would possibly perchance lead them.  Tomi Otudeko, Chief Working Officer at Honeywell Community, puts it this reach: “These investments in training signify environments the place the subsequent technology of Nigerian experts will doubtless be trained,” she acknowledged. “The Honeywell Excellence Programme has poke for more than thirty years on yarn of Honeywell Community made a resolution early on that capability sort is no longer a line item you review yearly. It is a dedication you manufacture into how the organisation operates. We need those environments to be robust. That can perchance well furthermore very effectively be a enterprise ardour.”

Yewande Giwa, Chief Governance and Sustainability Officer at Honeywell Community, notes that the organisation’s reach to social investment is guided by accountability to acknowledged priorities and a clear framework for apply-via. “Impression is no longer defined by arrangement, but by continuity. What matters is that commitments endure, and that institutions are strengthened on yarn of we acknowledged we would possibly perchance perchance well.”

With more than two million annual applicants competing for 700,000 university locations, and the Vice President calling for private sector participation in training financing, Dr. Otudeko’s more than twenty years of impact provides a template that other enterprise leaders can explore and replicate.

The post Beyond Authorities Funding: Oba Otudeko’s prolonged-time length reach to training investment seemed first on Vanguard News.