My Lord Bishop, Most Rev Felix Ajakaye,
Coadjutor Bishop of Ekiti.
The Staff and Students of the Dominican Institute
Dear friends,

It gives me great pleasure to welcome you all to the Dominican Institute, to this Eucharistic celebration, the Votive Mass of the Holy Spirit with which we begin the 2008-09 academic year.

Greater is my delight in welcoming the newest Bishop in the Catholic Church in Nigeria, Bishop Felix Ajakaye, who has been a friend to many of us since the years we studied philosophy together at the Seminary of Ss Peter and Paul, Bodija, Ibadan. Those of us who were his classmates guard fond memories of him as a great soccer player, an ardent soccer fan and a most intriguing soccer commentator.


My Lord Bishop, on behalf of the staff and students of our Institute, I thank you for accepting to preside at this Eucharistic celebration. We rejoice with you on your recent elevation to the episcopate, and we pray that the Holy Spirit who is Fount of wisdom and love will assist you to assume the task of a shepherd with wisdom and love. May he always bless you with good health.

I also wish to welcome in a special way our incoming students. I hope they will soon discover that studying at the Dominican Institute is, at the same time, a great privilege and a great challenge.

I welcome our continuing students who have taken time off to rest and to retool. You are already familiar with the Institute's tradition of rigorous study. In this regard, you are returning to a familiar terrain.

Permit me to use this welcome address to share some news and some thoughts with you. In July 2004, I had the privilege of being appointed President of the Dominican Institute for a term lasting four years. As stipulated by the Statutes of the Institute, the full time faculty was consulted to determine who the next President of the Institute should be. With a unanimous vote of the full time faculty, and with the consent of the Chancellor and Grand Chancellor of the Institute, I am able to stand before you this morning to present this address having been appointed President for a second term. I wish to thank the staff and students of the Institute for the immense support given me during my first term and for the confidence reposed in me through their expressed desire that I continue in the office of President. We have worked together as a great team. Yet, credit for whatever was accomplished goes to the team, while blame for whatever we have not been able to achieve but which we ought to have achieved goes to the leader. I fully recognize that, as President, the buck stops at my desk. I look forward to your support during the second term. Working together, we shall accomplish greater things. This President is ready to work with the staff, students and well-wishers of the Institute so that the Institute will continue to be an oasis of academic excellence.

I also wish to report that in the course of the school break that has just ended, the Institute received a visitation panel from the National Universities Commission regarding our affiliation to the University of Ibadan. We had two days of meeting, inspection of our programme and facilities, and stimulating intellectual discussion. The team was more than impressed by what we have to offer. Without sounding too optimistic, I am happy report to you that with this panel visiting us, we have good grounds to believe that we are approaching a happy resolution of the status of our affiliation to the University of Ibadan. Related to the approach of a happy resolution of our status as an affiliate school is our effort at transforming the Institute into the Dominican University. We are not only on course, our match is in fact gathering momentum. We shall keep you posted.

As we begin a new school year, we must remind ourselves and keep in focus the purpose of education in general, and of university education in particular. The protection and promotion of the dignity of every human person in and though the promotion and protection of intelligence, of morality, and of competence-this is the loft goal that education seeks to attain. The natural habitat of the human person is a life lived in the friendship of common life. And our common life challenges us to be in the pursuit of the common good so that the human family will not fall victim of a self-inflicted extinction. But it is not sufficient for us to admit that the desire for the good is satisfied in the life of friendship that common life is. We must also acknowledge that intelligent regulation of common life is a prerequisite for common good. And it takes leaders who are intellectually, morally and technically competent to direct our common life in the direction of the common good. Now, this common good should never be mistaken for the collective attainment of transient satisfaction, of what makes us feel good, but the fruit of the collaborative task of seeking happiness in virtue, of sharing common ideals and values.

Here at the Dominican Institute, our goal is to form a new generation of leaders for the Church and for the society. We are not just in the business of giving certificates. For it is quite possible to find people in possession of certificates who are incompetent or immoral or unintelligent. Such people, if they are ever found in positions of leadership, will not be able to perform the responsibilities that the privilege of authority would have placed on their shoulders. Here at the Dominican Institute, we are intent on leading each student to the acquisition of competence, and to the moral and intellectual formation required of responsible leaders. We recognize that a good leader is not one who does things for the people but one who facilitates the actualization of the potentials of the led so that the led can take charge of their own lives and work for the best way to live.

During the last school break, the whole world watched with delight the Olympic Games in Beijing, China. And in my welcome address to the NUC visitation panel, I referred to the stadium in which the games were hosted as a stadium that combines artistic magnificence with technological innovation. The stadium is called the Bird's Nest. Here at the Dominican Institute, we are working to build a scholar's nest. It is an on-going project, an expanding universe that will soon become the Dominican University.
And so, to our incoming and continuing students, I say: welcome to our scholar's nest. I assure you that, in this nest, all the languages you will learn and all the texts you will read, all the presuppositions you will examine and all the deductions you will make, all the doctrinal propositions you will come across and all the systematic explications you will attempt are meant to provoke in you the love of beauty, lead you to grasp reality, to encounter the Really Real, to receive the revelation of the One who is Beauty Itself. When you encounter this Beauty that St. Augustine of Hippo described as "ever ancient ever new", you will be transformed into agents of transformation, not just holders of certificates and possessors of meal tickets. You will be agents of the Holy Spirit whom we have evoked in this Mass. You will become transformed and transformative agents of the Breath of God, the Breath of Beauty renewing the face of the earth.
My Lord Bishop, dear colleagues and students, dear friends, once again, I thank you for being here, and I thank you for your patient listening.

Father Anthony A. Akinwale, O.P.
President and Professor of Theology