500,000 agric students learn under horrible condition – Provost

Peter Dada, Akure
The Provost of the Federal College of Agriculture, Akure, Dr. Samson Odedina, has said about 500,000 students of the 40 colleges of agriculture in Nigeria learn under poor condition
of infrastructural decay due to exclusion of the colleges from Tertiary Education Trust Fund by act of parliament .

He described the non-inclusion of colleges of agriculture and polytechnics in the country as the beneficiaries of TETFUND as a national error.

Odedina stated this in his office in Akure, the Ondo State capital recently while addressing journalists on the forthcoming 60th anniversary of the institution, coming up in January 2017 .

The provost said there was a need for the agriculture colleges’ students to be motivated in order for them to set the pace for youths involvement in agriculture so as to enable the youths choose agriculture as a career.
He said, “There is an urgent need for government to address discriminatory funding of tertiary agricultural education at the expense of of agriculture technology institutions.

“It takes time to amend parliamentary act but in the interest of agriculture and youths embracing it, there is a need for deliberate funding of all federal colleges of agriculture in Nigeria. ”

Odedina, who noted that FECA was the first tertiary institution to be established in Ondo State, also lamented that the college was facing a challenge of land grabbing as he disclosed that over 60 percent of the institution’s land had allegedly been encroached upon while some other part of the remaining 40 per cent had been occupied by rocks and motor parks.

While appealing to the state government and well-meaning indigenes of Ondo State to save the institution from the hands of land grabbers, Odedina stated that the institution was already in court over some of its land allegedly being acquired by the grabbers.