Poverty, product of unused brain capacity —Bishop Oyedepo

Founder and chancellor, Landmark University, Omu Aran, Kwara State, Bishop David Oyedepo, has said that what African nations need for sustainable growth and development is a generation of indigenous solutions, particularly in the field of agriculture.

Speaking at the third convocation ceremony of the agric-oriented university on Friday, Bishop Oyedepo said that Africans should not allow Western education to destroy native intelligence that they are divinely endowed with.

The university chancellor, who said that forefathers in Africa started farming, identification of edible plants and crops before the advent of colonialists, added that poverty among blackmen was a product of unused brain and capacity to think solution.

A total number of 51 graduates bagged First Class grade, 233 had second class upper grade, 229 secured second class lower grade, while 19 were in Third Class division out of a grand total of 532 graduating students in the third convocation ceremony.

In his keynote address at the ceremony, the pioneer vice chancellor, Michael Okpara (Federal) University of Agriculture, Umudike, Professor Placid Njoku, said that the Federal Government, through Ministry of Education, should direct the National Universities Commission (NUC), the National Board for Technical Education (NBTE) and the National Commission for Colleges of Education (NCCE) to “totally revise their curriculum for the agriculture discipline to formally integrate entrepreneurship, approve agripreneurship as a full degree/diploma/NCE programme in all faculties, colleges and universities of agriculture, and approve a mandatory agripreneurship immersion period for all students of agriculture.”