An Agricultural Extension and Rural Development professor at the Federal University of Agriculture, Abeokuta (FUNAAB), Prof. Emmanuel Fakoya, has announced a ₦1 million annual prize to reward the university’s best Farm Practical Year (FPY) student.

The announcement on Thursday during the university’s 110th Inaugural Lecture, titled “Measurement and Scaling: Bedrock of Robust Agricultural Extension Research Analysis,” was instituted in honour of his late father, Pa Samuel Fakoya, and is set to run for the next 10 years, totalling a ₦10 million commitment to academic excellence.

Speaking as the Dean of the College of Agricultural Management and Rural Development, Fakoya explained that the award will promote hands-on agricultural training and will officially commence at the university’s 34th Convocation ceremony. 

“The prize will promote excellence in hands-on agricultural training and motivate outstanding performance among students,” he noted.

Beyond the endowment, the lecture served as a call for a paradigm shift in Nigeria’s agricultural policy formulation. Prof. Fakoya argued that national interventions in land management, livestock, and women’s empowerment often falter due to a lack of standardized measurement frameworks. 

He advocated for the institutionalisation of advanced quantitative tools such as Likert scaling and regression modelling to ensure that extension programs are anchored on empirical evidence rather than anecdotal accounts.

The Vice-Chancellor, Prof. Babatunde Kehinde, described the lecture as timely and impactful, stressing that strengthening research methodology is pivotal to Nigeria’s broader agricultural transformation agenda.

Source: Punch News