Financial constraints are blocking Nigeria's best postgraduate minds from completing advanced research, and a University of Ilorin professor wants the Nigerian Education Loan Fund to do something about it.

Professor John Adesiji Olorunmaiye of the Department of Mechanical Engineering made the call during a guest lecture at the valedictory ceremony held in Lagos to mark the retirement of Professor Omotayo Fakinlede of the University of Lagos.

Delivering a lecture titled "Advancing Engineering Education in Nigeria: Progress, Challenges and Prospects," Olorunmaiye argued that extending the loan scheme alongside a monthly stipend to postgraduate students would free them from financial pressure and allow full concentration on their research.

"If the student loan administered by NELFUND is extended to postgraduate students in engineering, so that even if you can't give them grants, you give them loans, what that will do to them is they will be able to concentrate on their work," he stated.

On the question of loan recovery, the professor assured that postgraduate beneficiaries would be among the easiest to trace, given their career paths. "These people, you won't have to look far for them before you see them. Many of them will become lecturers in various universities in Nigeria, so it will be easy to trace them," Olorunmaiye added, while also pressing for a stronger repayment mechanism to guarantee the scheme's long term sustainability.

The celebrant, Professor Omotayo Fakinlede, a specialist in Computational Mechanics from the Department of Systems Engineering at the University of Lagos, used the occasion to unveil his post retirement plans, centred on upskilling artisans across Nigeria.

"I want to train artisans because I can see that illiteracy at the artisan level is what makes us have tables with shelves that cannot come out," Fakinlede disclosed, noting that a poor grasp of geometry among artisans was directly responsible for the low quality of locally produced goods.

He revealed that a sustainable business model was already being developed to scale the initiative. "It's not even the money to pay for it because we have enough people who want to do the work. But once we can get a sustainable model, then we will do it," he said.

Reflecting on his years at both the University of Ilorin and the University of Lagos, Fakinlede expressed confidence that enough people within both institutions had absorbed and were actively building on the ideas he championed during his academic career. "If you keep destroying where you are standing, you will fall eventually," he remarked.