Professor Muhammed Mustapha Akanbi, the Vice Chancellor of Kwara State University, KWASU, has stated clearly that it doesn’t make any sense for students to graduate first class without any useful skills.
He came to this conclusion after the recent statement made by the National Bureau of Statistics, NBS, that about 21.7 million Nigerians are unemployed.
During his speech with newsmen when he led the management team of the institution in a visit to some selected government agencies in Abuja for support for the University, the Vice-Chancellor clearly stated that it was just pointless for universities in the country to graduate first class students who will later become jobless because they don’t have any job skills.
Also a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, SAN, Prof. Akanbi mentioned that KWASU due to it’s efforts in providing a solution to the issue of unemployment after graduation that many Nigerian youths put themselves in, has come to a decision to make a normal procedure to bring out graduates that are involved in one job-enabling skills or the other before and after graduation.
He added that KWASU currently has an existing centre for entrepreneurship and would soon release academic programmes.
Former Dean, Faculty of Law, University of Ilorin, UNILORIN, said “Our university is a university of community development and entrepreneurship. I like the fact that you appreciate what we are doing with entrepreneurship; that centre is being rejigged and rejuvenated.
“It is now called the centre for vocational, technical and entrepreneurship because we don’t want to teach entrepreneurship just in theory. We get our students involved in vocational things and technical aspects.
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While educating the University’s students to be independent instead of job seekers after graduation, Prof. Akanbi mentioned that KWASU has a programme that makes it compulsory for every student to own and manage a business.
He said, “You will see students engage in things like making face masks, face shields, hand sanitizers, some are into tailoring, some are into carpentry, some are into what I call mechanical automobile repair and things like that.
Still speaking, Prof. Akanbi, who got to office as Vice Chancellor on 1st April, 2020, expressed his plan to the University for better performance.
He said, “My plan is to move KWASU to a height better than I found it, and to achieve this mandate, I intend to ensure a conducive learning environment.
“One of the things we want to encourage is that research should not just be for research sake, we don’t want our research work to end up on the shelves. Our research would be aimed towards finding solutions to challenges.”
Prof. Akanbi also added that the University has expressed its readiness to to make sure that its students participate actively in the nation’s Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises, MSMEs, sub-sector.
He said, “Every student that gets admitted into KWASU is expected to start business, a registered business.
“President Buhari just assented to the new CAMA after about 30years and that had helped the quality of the ease of doing business. KWASU has started certain policies that this new CAMA is going to help to ensure that our students register a business enterprise, like a trade which you will register with the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) so that what we teach you in class you are able to start it while in school.
Prof. Akanbi said that students of KWASU have on different occasions won awards from CAC as a result of their business.
“I have just been reminded that in the past the CAC has given awards to our students because we are talking of every year almost 2,000 students registering with the CAC, because when you come in it is expected that it is not going to be only a classroom thing; so we take you through some technical, some provisional, some pure business enterprises,” he added.
The Vice Chancellor explained that the reason behind the University’s entrepreneurship scheme is to produce graduates who create jobs instead of those that would be in need of employment after graduation.
“The plan is that we don’t want students who will graduate and go and meet their parents that they are looking for a job. We want a wealth creator, we are not looking for students who just want to work in government sector but students who can start their own businesses and become entrepreneurs
