By O. O. Longe Esq.
There is a quiet but unmistakable moment in the life of every serious university when aspiration gives way to articulation—when founding ideals, once confined to mission statements and policy documents, begin to speak for themselves through disciplined scholarship.
The commencement of Lagos State University of Science and Technology’s first inaugural lecture series marks such a moment. Yet it does more than announce academic maturity; it signals an institution already thinking ahead, attentive to complexity, and confident enough to let ideas lead.
That confidence is evident in the theme chosen for the first inaugural lecture—“Lessons from Ants; Odyssey of the Insect Hunters,” scheduled to hold on 17 February 2026. For a university that has only recently marked its fourth anniversary, the choice is both striking and revealing. It suggests an institution unafraid to draw profound insights from unexpected domains, and sufficiently secure in its scholarly foundations to allow curiosity, rather than convention, to set the tone of its public intellectual life.
Inaugural lectures are not academic pageantry. They are rites of passage. They mark the moment a university declares its readiness to participate in the enduring conversation of ideas—where knowledge is not merely transmitted, but interrogated, refined, and offered back to society. To inaugurate this tradition with a lecture that turns to ants—often overlooked, endlessly industrious, radically cooperative—is to make a subtle but powerful statement about the intellectual culture the university seeks to cultivate.
The study of insects may appear modest at first glance, yet it sits at the crossroads of some of the most urgent questions of our time: ecological sustainability, resilience in complex systems, decentralized intelligence, and collective behavior under constraint. In an era shaped by climate uncertainty, fragile ecosystems, and the search for new models of organization—social, technological, and institutional—the lessons drawn from such natural systems are anything but trivial. They are, in fact, deeply futuristic.
What struck me most, as an interested outsider, was not the novelty of the theme, but the seriousness with which it was framed. The discourse surrounding the lecture did not chase spectacle. It pursued meaning. Science was treated not as a silo, but as a bridge—linking ecology to policy, observation to imagination, and the natural world to enduring human concerns about governance, cooperation, and survival. This capacity to see connections across fields is a defining attribute of universities that aspire to excellence rather than mere relevance.
Four years is a brief span in the life of a university, yet it is long enough for intentions to be tested. Many young institutions rush toward visibility—expanding programmes, multiplying structures, advertising ambition. The Lagos State University of Science and Technology appears to have chosen a more deliberate path: consolidating intellectual culture first and allowing public scholarship to emerge as a natural extension of that investment. The inauguration of its lecture series in February 2026 feels less like a debut and more like a declaration that the foundations are sufficiently firm to carry scholarly weight.
From a policy perspective, this moment matters. Higher education systems—particularly in emerging contexts—are often pressured to demonstrate immediate utility, measured in employability statistics, infrastructure, or revenue streams. While these concerns are not insignificant, they are insufficient indicators of a university’s long-term value. Institutions that endure are those that balance usefulness with curiosity, immediacy with foresight. By foregrounding scholarship at this stage of its evolution, and by doing so through a theme that looks beyond the obvious, the university signals a clear understanding of its deeper responsibility.
Equally telling is the ease with which the institution positions itself between the local and the global. The odyssey of the insect hunters may be rooted in specific scientific traditions, but its implications—environmental stewardship, systems thinking, adaptive governance—are unmistakably global. This ability to speak from context without being confined by it is a mark of academic maturity, particularly for a young university still defining its place within the wider intellectual ecosystem.
Excellence, after all, is not an endpoint; it is a discipline. It reveals itself in the questions a university chooses to ask, the courage to ask them differently, and the patience to pursue answers over time. In choosing to learn from ants, this university implicitly embraces a philosophy of growth that values collaboration over hierarchy, systems over silos, and long horizons over short wins.
The true test, of course, lies ahead. Traditions are sustained not by inaugural moments alone, but by consistency, openness, and renewal. Yet every tradition must begin somewhere. With its first inaugural lecture—anchored in “Lessons from Ants; Odyssey of the Insect Hunters” and fixed for 17 February 2026—the university has taken a decisive step. It has moved from vision to voice, and from voice toward a future-oriented inquiry about knowledge itself.
If this odyssey is any indication, the journey ahead will not be loud, but it will be thoughtful. And in the life of universities, it is often such thoughtful journeys—patient, cumulative, and intellectually curious—that leave the deepest and most enduring mark.
