Prof. Pai Obanya

Pai Obanya (Ph.D.) is currently Chairman of the Board of the West African Examinations Council (WAEC) and a member of the Committee of Experts of Education International (EI). He is Technical Adviser to the Reform Implementation Committee of the Federal Ministry of Education in Nigeria, after recently serving as Chairman of the Presidential Task Team on Education.

He was on the staff of the University of Ibadan-Nigeria, where he attained the rank of full Professor of Education in 1979 and served as Director of the Institute of Education. Professor Obanya was in the service of UNESCO for 11 years, during which period he served as Deputy Director (1988-91) and Director (1991-1999) of the Regional Office for Education in Africa (UNESCO/BREDA).

He has been spending his years of “very active retirement” providing advisory, consultancy, research and training services to international development cooperation agencies, national governments, non-governmental organizations, tertiary institutions, and the private sector.

Known as “the Grand Sage of Education in Africa”, Pai Obanya is a much-sought-after keynote speaker on education worldwide. A beneficiary of both old and modern open-distance learning models, he has been concerned with innovative strategies for making education accessible to all persons, of all ages, in all places, and in different life circumstances.