First-class without additional job skills a waste ― KWASU VC

The newly appointed Vice-Chancellor (VC) of the Kwara State University (KWASU), Prof. Muhammed Mustapha Akanbi, at the weekend declared that it is pointless for universities in the country to graduate first class students who have no additional job skills.

Prof. Akanbi, who spoke on the premise of the recent data released by the National Bureau of Statistics that 21.7 million Nigerians are unemployed, said university graduates should have additional skills in order to be self-reliant instead of job seekers after graduation.

To him, it is, therefore, a waste for a first-class graduate not to have additional skills that will stand him out; but start to look for a job that wasn’t available two and three years after graduation.

The Vice-Chancellor, who is also a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN) pointed out that in order to provide a solution to the jobless situation many Nigeria youths found themselves after graduation, KWASU has decided to make it a norm to produce graduates that are readily engaged in one job-enabling Skills/trade or the other before and after graduation.

Prof. Akanbi stated this in a chat with newsmen in Abuja, after he led the management team of the institution on a working visit to some select government agencies in Abuja to mobilise support for the University.

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He noted that KWASU which already has an existing centre for entrepreneurship would soon roll out academic programmes that ensure all its students are exposed to state-of-the-art skills in computing and at the same time understand at least one foreign language to prepare them for the 21st century’s challenges.

He 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.

“Already, we encourage our students to engage different entrepreneur skills, acquire, hold and consider all certificates important.”

On grooming the University’s students to be self-reliant instead of job seekers after graduation, Prof. Akanbi said KWASU, renowned for its entrepreneurial prowess, has a programme that makes it mandatory for every student to own a business.

“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. And 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,” the VC said.

Speaking further, Prof. Akanbi, who assumed office as VC on 1st April 2020, expressed his readiness to reposition the University for better performance.

“My plan is to move KWASU to a lofty height better than I found it, and to achieve this broad mandate, I intend to one; ensure a conducive learning environment. I also intend to pursue quality-based research. 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 geared towards finding solutions to contemporary challenges,” Prof. Akanbi said.

 

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