The Vice Chancellor of Babcock University, Ilisan Remo, Ogun State, Prof Afolarin Ojewole, has warned against fighting Artificial Intelligence, describing it as a technological force that should be embraced and deployed to make the world a lot better and enhance the 21st-century economy.
- +Babcock varsity VC urges AI adoption, commercialisation of innovation
Ojewole said that a university working in tune with the realities of the 21st-century economy would not take pride in producing research that is only left to adorn the pages of journals, but rather in research that has been scaled up and commercialised to help solve some of the problems confronting humanity.
Ojewole said that a university working in tune with the realities of the 21st-century economy would not take pride in producing research that is only left to adorn the pages of journals, but rather in research that has been scaled up and commercialised to help solve some of the problems confronting humanity.
The Vice Chancellor disclosed, “The global innovation economy does not reward institutions for what they know; it rewards them for what they build, what they deploy, and what they bring to market.
He explained further that “The question before every serious university today is not whether it has excellent faculty or rigorous curricula, those are necessary conditions, not sufficient ones.
“The question is: does this institution have a structured pathway to translate its intellectual capital into ventures, products, and solutions that create economic and societal value? That question is the reason we are all gathered here this morning. And the answer is what we are formally activating today.”
Prof Ojewole disclosed this on Tuesday at the 2026 Artificial Intelligence, Babcock Innovation Ventures and Commercialisation Summit held at the 600-capacity amphitheatre of the institution.
The VC said that innovation, particularly with the advent of Artificial intelligence, has continued to play a huge role in the rapidly changing 21st-century economy, restructuring entire industries and redefining how nations compete, saying that it is just wise for the people to leverage this potent technology tool to advance the frontiers of economic growth and development.
Speaking on why the university is launching Babcock Innovation Ventures, Ojewole said that “We looked at our research output and asked: how much of it reaches the communities that need it? We looked at our graduates and asked: how many of them are creating enterprises rather than just seeking employment?
“We looked at our partnerships and asked: are they structured for mutual value creation, or are they ceremonial? We looked at our intellectual property and asked: Is it being protected, commercialized, and deployed in the service of society, or is it sitting in journals that few will ever read?
“This is why we did not create an Innovation club or launch another entrepreneurship seminar series. What we have built, what you will see formally launched over these two days, is an institutional system. A system that connects the academic engine of this university to the innovation economy in a deliberate, governed, and scalable way.”
He explained that BIV is a university-wide commercialization and venture development framework that transforms how the university engages with the innovation economy.
Ojewole stated, “It integrates four critical layers that, until now, have operated largely in isolation: our academic systems, our research and innovation infrastructure, our entrepreneurship development capacity, and our industry and capital engagement pathways.
“When these layers operate in silos, the university produces knowledge. When they operate as an integrated system, the university produces ventures, solutions, and economic impact, Babcock Innovation Ventures V is that system”.
The Co-chair of the summit, Dr Raymond Okoro, said that BIV represents a deliberate expansion from knowledge creation to structured commercialization, where research is not only published, but translated into real-world solutions and scalable impact.
Okoro further described BIV as an institutional platform designed to bring together governance, research, industry collaboration, and venture development into a single, coordinated ecosystem, ensuring that innovation is no longer incidental but structured, supported, and sustained.
One of the guest speakers at the event, Nicky Verd from Digitally Fit, South Africa, while speaking on the future of work, said that acquiring degrees is no doubt good, but must be supported by digital skills, since the world is moving towards automation through the deployment of technology, particularly Artificial Intelligence.
Verd said, “People must move with the times; they must acquire relevant digital skills. You must be ready to evolve, you must get prepared to disrupt, not to be disrupted, whatever your degrees, you must prioritise having relevant digital skills”.
The Ogun State Commissioner for Education, Science and Technology, Prof Abayomi Arigbabu, while emphasising the deployment of technology to expand the frontiers of education, has, however, sounded a note of caution on over-reliance on tools such as AI or ChatGPT.
Arigbabu, sharing personal experience, said that sometimes these technology tools give inaccurate information, and therefore it is advisable that whatever information is obtained from them is also fact-checked, otherwise it could be counterproductive and embarrassing.
