My first impression of China
By Sola Oyewole
A highly organized people – With excellence in all they do including the architecture of their buildings and the cleanliness of their roads. One can pick their commitment to rules and order of their streets and they show great respects for the plant kingdom which they give ample space in their environment. You can read prosperity from the quality of the cars on their streets and great commitments in the services provided by their workers.
After staying in China for five days and interacting with their academic community and reading about their leaders, I wish that Nigeria becomes like China. Almost everything produced in the West is produced by China.
China produces aircraft and motor cars. They have satellites in the cloud. They are committed to producing what they consume. They dare difficult tasks and not afraid to start small with the purpose of making it better with time.
They invest a lot in education and give extra supports to the education of their youths. Their universities, over 3000 in number are quality universities. They do not allow their citizens to be influenced freely by the social media of the west. So, there is no easy access to WhatsApp, Facebook or Twitter, as China has its own version of WhatsApp, Facebook and Twitter.
I don’t know how they were able to achieve this; the government has zero tolerance for corruption and the citizens are highly patriotic to their nation and leaders. China is what Nigeria ought to be in Africa. Hope is however not lost.
Nigeria will not always be like this. A day is coming, when truth and justice will return to our land. A day is coming when hardwork, commitment and honesty will be values that will be demanded of those who rule us.
A day is coming when holiness will be respected and only those who fear God will be able to rule over us without being attacked or killed by Nigeria. May that day come. May Nigeria become what China is today. May we survive this Nigeria of today so that we can see the Nigeria coming tomorrow.
In December 2022, Association of African Universities (AAU) signed an MOU with China Association of Higher Education (CAHE) Between July 4-7, AAU organized a Conference of Recors, Vice-Chancellors and Presidents of African Universities (COREVIP) at Windhoek, Namibia. China sent a big delegation to this conference in Namibia. The conference was highly successful.
At the Namibia conference, a China-Africa Collaboration charter was signed with AAU where AAU was given a mandate to connect 50 universities in Africa with 50 Universities in China for partnership and collaboration Between July 28 and August 04, Prof. Olusola Oyewole as the Secretary-General of AAU was invited to join a meeting of World University Presidents, where he met with the China Minister of Education and spoke at the gathering on behalf of Africa .
The inspiration to put up the small write-up was got during the visit. I was able to visit some Universities in Beijing, aching during this visit. I will also make my second visit to China at the end of August as I have been mandated to select 10 universities across Africa to join me in visiting China from August 28 to September 3. Two Nigerian Universities will be among the ten – Afe Babalola University, Ado-Ekiti and Federal University of Agriculture, where I served as VC from 2012 to 2017.
Prof Sola Oyewole is the former Vice Chancellor Federal University of Agriculture (FUNNAB), Abeokuta, Ogun State, South-West of Nigeria and the Secretary-General of, Association of African Universities
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