Beyond Executive Funding: Oba Otudeko’s lengthy-time length technique to training investment  

By Festus Okonkwo

In July 1947, Kenneth Mellanby arrived in Ibadan to set up what would become Nigeria’s first college. He figured out, as he later recorded, “no college, no building, no pupil body, no team, no governing body.” Six months later, 104 students walked onto a non eternal situation at Eleyele and started their study at the University College, constructed from nothing, in a nation that did no longer but formally exist.

Seventy-seven years later, that founding wager remains active. Nigeria now has 309 universities. Better than two million younger Nigerians issue for admission slots each and every yr; approximately 700,000 are admitted. Federal universities depend upon the Tertiary Training Belief Fund, financed by a 2% training tax on company earnings, receiving approximately ?2.86 billion each and every in 2025, a figure that covers staffing, upkeep, and the increasing stress of pupil quiz.

In December 2025, correct thru the Nigeria Training Dialogue board (NEF) held in Abuja, Vice President Kashim Shettima made the level that college directors have lengthy understood: the financing burden can no longer relaxation on authorities alone. University directors have tried to court interior most sector funding for administrative programmes, but after they enact, a well-recognized cycle plays out. A pledge is made at a successfully-attended ceremony, land is allocated, a mission is commissioned, and expectations are raised. Then all but again, over time, shifting priorities, funding constraints, and management changes hinder development, and the promised mission stalls.

Dr. Oba Otudeko, CFR, recognised this truth about three a protracted time up to now.

Dr. Otudeko’s model departs from that cycle. His interventions are defined by completion and continuity. Here’s evident in how capital is deployed. Thru the Oba Otudeko Foundation, this intention has been expressed thru a sustained and structured programme of investments in training. In station of episodic interventions, the level of passion has been on building institutional ability over time.

The investment portfolio spans infrastructure, curriculum endowments, vocational coaching, scholarships, and institutional ability building across a pair of Nigerian institutions. Every intervention is designed for longevity, reflecting a model that prioritises sturdiness over immediacy. The foundation operates because the provision platform, but the underlying philosophy is believed to be one of lengthy-time length, system-oriented investment.

Investments consist of the Honeywell Auditorium at the Lagos Substitute College, Pan-Atlantic University. LBS holds accreditation from the Association to Approach Collegiate Colleges of Substitute (AACSB), the first institution in West Africa to construct up it, a feeble met by fewer than 6% of enterprise faculties worldwide. The auditorium hosts lectures, govt programmes, and convocations for an establishment that supplies a vital fragment of Nigeria’s interior most sector management pipeline. Dr. Otudeko chose to station capital in a facility of that calibre, at an establishment of that standing, and that call jam the sample for the investments that adopted.

One other well-known investment is the 2,400-sq.-metre administrative advanced for Olabisi Onabanjo University in In the past-Iwoye, Ogun Articulate. Dr. Otudeko served as Chancellor of OOU from 2001 to 2010. The investment used to be made impartial of any formal obligation, reflecting a fixed principle: commitments defined by lengthy-time length standpoint somewhat than station and performed with continuity in mind.

At  Olabisi Onabanjo University, the Foundation’s toughen comprises both the endowment of the Centre for Entrepreneurial Reviews and the provision of a 2,400-sq.-metre administrative advanced. The connection between the two is functional somewhat than sequential. Endowment sustains programmes; infrastructure enables offer.

When addressed in tandem, they pass an establishment past expansion against functionality. A same good judgment is visible at the secondary diploma. At All Saints’ College, Ibadan, donated in the early days of the Foundation, the govtblock addressed a constraint contemporary across many Nigerian faculties: the diversion of study room dwelling for administrative employ. By consolidating operations, the intervention successfully returned discovering out dwelling to students. One other well-known contribution comprises the donation of a College students’ Cafeteria to Bells University of Technology, Ota, Ogun Articulate.

At some level of every institution he has supported, Dr. Otudeko targets the same thing: the particular, practical barrier that determines whether or no longer a pupil completes or drops out.

Dr. Otudeko’s technique to training has shaped how Honeywell Crew operates. He constructed the Honeywell Excellence Programme in 1993 as a Honeywell Crew initiative, and it has delivered more than three a protracted time of management and graduate management coaching unbroken by currency crises, political transitions, or a international pandemic. The programme displays a decision Dr. Otudeko made at the organisational diploma: that expertise pattern is a enterprise feature, constructed into how the firm operates and resourced to take a look at.

Thru the Foundation, he builds the institutions. Thru Honeywell Crew, he identifies and empowers the parents that can lead them.  Tomi Otudeko, Chief Working Officer at Honeywell Crew, locations it this system: “These investments in training symbolize environments where the subsequent expertise of Nigerian experts will most doubtless be professional,” she acknowledged. “The Honeywell Excellence Programme has bustle for more than thirty years on story of Honeywell Crew made a decision early on that expertise pattern is no longer a line merchandise you assessment yearly. It is a dedication you form into how the organisation operates. We desire those environments to be sturdy. That is a enterprise passion.”

Yewande Giwa, Chief Governance and Sustainability Officer at Honeywell Crew, notes that the organisation’s technique to social investment is guided by accountability to said priorities and a obvious framework for apply-thru. “Impression is no longer defined by blueprint, but by continuity. What matters is that commitments endure, and that institutions are bolstered on story of we acknowledged we would.”

With more than two million annual candidates competing for 700,000 college locations, and the Vice President calling for interior most sector participation in training financing, Dr. Otudeko’s more than two a protracted time of impact offers a template that other enterprise leaders can detect and replicate.

The submit Beyond Executive Funding: Oba Otudeko’s lengthy-time length technique to training investment regarded first on Vanguard News.