The Chairman, Governing Council of International Psychometric Centre, Otunba Abimbola Davis has revealed that the council is ready to expand the study of Psychometrics to all tertiary institutions in Nigeria.
Speaking to newsmen at the council’s head office located at NCRI Compound, Moore Plantation Apata, Ibadan Oyo State on Thursday, Otunba Davis said in the efforts of the council in expanding Psychometrics study in tertiary institutions within the federation, the council in association with Books and Sports Limited has decided to publish their news magazine called Genius Magazine.
Otunba Davis, who is a poet and an author, said the purpose of the magazine is to disseminate information about Psychometrics and educational system in general; “it is a snapshot of various activities of the International Psychometrics Centre and also serves the purpose of reinforcing and improved interaction between the Centre and its readers.
“The magazine is a specialized magazine, we introduced it purposely to disseminate information about Psychometrics and education in general. The magazine was initiated when we realised that the Psychometrics is something new to this environment in Nigeria but is a compulsory course all over the world”.
He further stated that the Genius Magazine which used to be an online publication was first printed in January, 2022, adding that the magazine will not be available at newspaper stands because of its production cost but will rather be distributed to schools, ministries, agencies, embassies and the likes free of charge.
Speaking further, the Chairman said the entire country has five Psychometricians, all of them produced by the University of Ibadan and after much enlightenment on the importance of the course and the fact that the federal government made it mandatory as a general course in all tertiary institutions, the students started coming in.
“We encountered few problems; one of it is that, the students were yet to understand what Psychometrics is all about. There were lots of distruption, we had to enlighten them. Moreover, in the entire country today, we only have five Psychometricians at the masters’ level, all of them produced by the University of Ibadan,” Otunba Davis said.
Speaking further on expansion of the course, Otuba Abimbola said the Centre is ready to introduce Psychometrics as a subject in all Nigerian secondary schools so that it will be taken as a full course in all Tertiary Institutions.
“We discovered along the line that even among the students, some of them were thinking if they had known about this, they would have taken this as a full course so we now brought another program because you can’t run a full program when it is not taught at secondary school level, so we are getting to introduce it to all secondary schools in Nigeria at all cost”.
The chairman stated that in addition to promoting Psychometrics as full course, by September IPCentre will be introducing a platform which he called ‘The Ripsnorters’ in September, 2022, an online community of communities where netizens can get to meet different people at different spheres of life. He said the platform is expected to boost a minimum of ten million users by the time of launching.
“By September we will be introducing a platform, a full porter which I call The Ripsnorters. It is expected to boost a minimum of ten million users by the time we are launching it and it would be another way of disseminating information about Psychometrics”.
“We are introducing this platform so that you can discover your talent and first thing you do if you subscribe today, is to undertake at least six or eight tests to know who you are, even if you lie, we will know you are lying.
“It was designed by our partner, Cambridge Psychiatric Centre which is under Cambridge University. They designed it for their students, gave us the access to it and it was modified to suite our own purpose”.
While speaking on some of the ways to promote the platform, Otunba Davis said the Centre is ready to collaborate with major news medium in the country; “the newspapers will help the Centre to direct people, most especially advertisers to the platform through their employment pages.
“We will be collaborating with all the advertisements on employment pages of newspapers and tell the advertisers, that we have a platform that will help you advertise your wares freely without taking money”.
In addition to expanding Psychometrics in Nigeria schools, he added that IPCentre is planning to introduce Campus Psychology Tour in all tertiary institutions within the country to create awareness for the program and to shape the minds of the students.
Packaged by Lanre Olabisi and Mayowa Owogbade
