Governor Seyi Makinde of Oyo State on Friday explained the rationale behind the insistence that the government and academia must collaborate.
Makinde while receiving a delegation from the University of Lagos, Akoka in Ibadan maintained that the two must effectively work together to enable the country solve some of its problems.
The delegation was led by the Vice-Chancellor, University of Lagos, Professor Toyin Ogundipe.
In his address, Makinde called for an improvement of the relationship between the town and gown, adding that the two must maintain a mutually beneficial relationship.
He maintained that the state would explore the opportunity of having a Memorandum of Understanding with UNILAG on how to address some of the challenges facing the state.
He said, “I want to take this opportunity to let you know that we followed the crisis that engulfed UNILAG recently, and we are happy that things have been resolved and you are getting back into the real business of why the university was created, and you are fulfilling your mandate as a university.
“Yes, a crisis is what we go through as human beings, but I am glad that you were able to resolve it and things are back on track.
“I came to UNILAG and approached the Electrical Engineering Department because I knew I carried out the experiment at the machines laboratory there. So, we brought Italians there and the test was conducted successfully.
“After that, we thought of other things to do to collaborate between the industry and the university and that was what birthed the Automation Laboratory.
“Actually, when we were running the project, we got into a situation where we were looking for people to power PSCs all over the place. I went everywhere in Nigeria looking for Curriculum Vitae but eventually, they were sending me people of 22, 23 years old from the Philippines. I thought how do we ensure we have young engineers that can get into PSC programming.
‘I am not sure how deep the programme is now but from that exercise and some of the things we did in-house, we were able to produce a lot of young engineers coming out of schools; that got into PSC programming.”
