The Educated Elite In The Nigeria Society 1

MR VICE-CHANCELLOR, SIR, DISTINGUISHED EDUCATED ELITE AUDIENCE: It is pleasantly fortuitous that, with the theme I have selected for the inauguration of Ibadan University Lecture, this premier seat of learning in Nigeria is observing the maxim: “Charity begins at home”. For Ibadan is the leading manufacturer of the cream of the Nigerian educated elite to date—8,110 successful alumni, as opposed to a total of 11,40s1 by the four other Nigerian universities combined. We should be justly proud that in a “developing” country’s society like ours where, literally, knowledge is power, our institution has done so much, within a quarter of a century, in producing this primordially strategic class in the emergence of “New Africa”.