Hungary’s parliament approved a government proposal on Tuesday to donate state-owned land to a planned Chinese university in Budapest, despite opposition criticism and a recent protest that accused the government of cosying up to Beijing.

Opponents of nationalist Prime Minister Viktor Orban are concerned that the planned $2 billion campus could undermine the quality of higher education and help Beijing increase its influence in Hungary and the European Union.

Orban’s government argues that the school could help attract new research and development centres and new investments to Hungary, a central European country of 10 million people, which relies heavily on foreign investment to drive economic growth.

Lawmakers of Orban’s ruling Fidesz voted overwhelmingly to donate four plots on the banks of the Danube River to a foundation in charge of the planned campus of Shanghai-based Fudan University, displacing a planned local student housing area.

The law says the government must present the final plans of the project, including its costs, to parliament by the end of 2022, after the next election in April.

Orban said last week that the issue would be then put to a referendum.

However, Budapest mayor Gergely Karacsony, who is vying to become Orban’s opposition challenger, next year, is seeking a referendum on the campus before the election.

Hungary’s parliament passed legislation on Tuesday that bans the dissemination of content in schools deemed to promote homosexuality and gender change.

His Fidesz party, which promotes a Christian-conservative agenda, tacked the proposal banning school talks on LGBT issues to a separate, widely backed bill that strictly penalises paedophilia.

The move triggered a mass rally outside parliament on Monday, while several rights groups have called on Fidesz to withdraw the bill.

Fidesz lawmakers overwhelmingly backed the legislation on Tuesday, while leftist opposition parties boycotted the vote.

Under amendments submitted to the bill last week, under-18s cannot be shown any content that encourages gender change or homosexuality. This also applies to advertisements.

The law sets up a list of organisations allowed to provide education about sex in schools.

Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, will soon begin to generate and distribute electricity to the university community when the ongoing 8.03MW power project is completed.

The Vice Chancellor, Professor Eyitope Ogunbodede stated this at the press conference to herald the 60th anniversary of the institution on campus within the week.

The Vice Chancellor who said the institution has obtained Marketing License from the Transmission Corporation of Nigeria to distribute electricity to the university community said the Rural Electrification Agency (REA) 8.03MW power project would soon be completed.

He said this will enable OAU generate its own electricity hence reduce the economic burden of high tariff and ensure regular electricity supply to enhance its various academic activities.

Ogunbodede added that the University presently pays over N80m per month for electricity and additionally over N2m per month on Diesel to power generators.

He expressed hope that while the project was aimed at the University community, it may have no choice but to benefit the immediate community with the excess power, since the university could not exhaust the 8.03MW.

He said the university has made significant advances in research, resulting in nationally and globally significant success stories.

The VC stressed that the OAU has achieved rapid growth and development, particularly in the areas of Academic programmes, Research, Infrastructural Development and human resources development.

Ogunbodede said that the university has produced, among its staff, a Nobel Laureatte and six Nigerian National Merit Award Winners.

While commending the University Alumni and friends for their assistance in supporting various projects and programmes in the institution, he asked for more interventions and support in the face of inadequate and dwindling resources from the Federal Government.

Ogunmodede explained that OAU had recorded significant achievements in all its areas of competencies, particularly in learning, research and community service, leading to innovations and patents in the areas of Health, Drug, Agriculture and Technology.

Also Speaking, the new Chairman of the OAU Governing Council, Owelle Oscar Udoji peomised that during his tenure, OAU will break fresh grounds in research and contribution to National Development.

Meanwhile, the Vice Chancellor of the University of Gambia, Professor Faqir Anjum who siezed the occasion to sign a Memorandum of Understanding with the OAU, thanked Nigeria for her contributions to the educational development of Gambia.

Obafemi Awolowo University was established on the 8th of June 1961 as University of Ife by the then government of Western Region of Nigeria.

China’s education ministry has opened an office to oversee after-school tutoring in a move that comes as part of a national clamp-down on the private tutoring sector.

China has framed tough new rules for the industry, aiming both to ease pressure on school children and boost the country’s birth rate by lowering family living costs, sources told Reuters last month.

Recall in a major policy shift recently, China said that it would allow all married couples to have three children, ending a two-child policy that has failed to raise the country’s declining birthrates and avert a demographic crisis.

The official Xinhua news agency said following a politburo meeting chaired by President Xi Jinping, the policy change will come with supportive measures, which will be conducive to improving our country’s population structure, fulfilling the country’s strategy of actively coping with an ageing population.

The Commissioner of Education in Osun State, Folorunsho Bamisayemi, says the renowned Tablet of Knowledge, popularly called Opon Imo, earlier withdrawn from students of Senior Secondary Schools will soon be re-introduced in grand style.

The Commissioner said in a chat with journalists in Osogbo, the state capital.

He said the popular Opon Imo which won a lot of accolade across the world as a phenomenal ICT innovation in schools, was only temporarily withdrawn to be refurbished and be improved upon.

He noted that the Opon Imo had to be withdrawn because the state did not have an ICT policy on education before it was introduced into schools, hence, its ineffective use.

The withdrawal was to enable the state develop a comprehensive and robust Information and Communication Technology policy in the education sector

The Commissioner noted that some of the ICT facilities had been laying fallow since 2010 as teachers and students lacked requisite capacities.

The Commissioner maintained that the ministry was working on ICT policy that would ensure teachers were adequately trained to equip them with proper skills to manage the Tablets, and other ICT facilities and centers.

The Petroleum Training Institute, Effurun, Delta State has matriculated 1,901 students for its 2020/2021 academic session.

The acting Principal/Chief Executive, PTI, Henry Adimula, who administered the matriculation oath on the students urged them to shun unlawful assembly and protest on campus.

He said the management does not tolerate any social vices as spelt out in the Institute’s Handbook, adding that anyone caught would face the consequences.

The acting Principal/Chief Executive urged the students to take their study with all seriousness which was their primary aim of coming to the Institute.

Adimula disclosed that the PTI, which is the foremost institute of oil and gas in Africa, was being reorganised in line with the current trend in the oil and gas industry.

He noted that, that the Institute being specialised for the training of manpower for the oil, gas and allied industries, placed the students at advantage over their peers in other tertiary institutions.

The management of the University of Ilorin says plans are currently underway to perfect and patent some of the inventions of the final year students of the Department of Computer Engineering.

Speaking at the opening exhibition of the projects, the Vice-Chancellor (VC) of the university, Professor Sulyman Abdulkareem, applauded the final year students for their project inventions

He advised the students on various ways to perfect the projects while also pledging his support in developing some of them.

On his part, the Dean of the Faculty of Engineering and Technology in the institution Professor David Ogunniyi, explained that the institution would patent the inventions for commercial purposes.

The exhibition featured over 12 inventions from the students of the Department of Computer Engineering.

Ogunniyi lauded the efforts of the students while advising them to strive harder in developing the projects for commercial purposes so as to enhance their knowledge and further contribute positively to society.

Similarly, the Head of the Department of Computer Engineering, Tajudeen Ajiboye, said that the exhibition was organised so that the authorities could witness the brilliant inventions of the students.

He added that the exhibition was to help the students turn their inventions into products, so as not to rot away.

In his remarks, the Director of Academic Planning, Professor Isaac Adimula, also commended the students for their innovation.

He advised them not to relent on their discoveries while expressing the hope that the knowledge they had gained would make them independent and self-sufficient in the nearest future.

The inventions exhibited include an automated irrigation system, a pilot-free drone, a mater magnetizer system with a cloud-based data storage unit, an electrically enhanced walking stick for the visually impaired and a Voice control for home automation.

Others are electronic keys for residential access control using fingerprint technology; a parking space notification system; an automatic quiz buzzer; and an automatic change-over for three power sources.

They also include a medical parameter measurement system with a cloud-based data storage unit.