By Steve Oni, Ilorin
President Muhammadu Buhari has challenged Nigerian universities to use their tools to build on research and innovations with the ultimate aims of generating new knowledge and skills that would enable government realise its industrialisation agenda.
President Buhari represented by the Deputy Executive Secretary Academics, National Universities Commission, Doctor Suleiman Ramon-Yusuf, gave the charge on Wednesday while speaking at the 35th Convocation ceremony of the University of Ilorin.
The President noted that research and innovations constituted important components to knowledge, hence universities must see the current economic challenges as opportunities for retrospection and skills development by improving their relevance in research and innovations.
He called on Ministries, Departments and Agencies with the mandate for research and education development to collaborate, share resources and ensure that research outputs from universities have direct impact on the societies.
President Buhari, who is the Visitor to the University, said his government remained committed, resolute and confident to fund researches in the universities through TETFUND within the available scarce resources.
The President also condemned the trending stories of sex for grades in the country’s tertiary institutions which , he said, had assumed global attention, adding that he had directed appropriate government agencies to tame the situation and bring wanting lecturers indulging in such scandalous act to book.
Earlier, the Pro-Chancellor of the University and Chairman of the Governing Council, Doctor Abdullah Jibril Oyekan, had urged President Muhammadu Buhari to ensure massive review of the curriculum of the country’s tertiary institutions in order to start breeding a generation of focused, patriotic and particularly disciplined youths through deliberate character formation.
In his address, the Vice Chancellor of the University, Professor Sulyman Age Abdulkareem, disclosed that the Institution graduated 12,009, with 130 out of the number bagging first class, as well as 242 PhDs, and 929 Masters from various faculties.
Professor Abdulkareem told the graduands that the era of white collar jobs is over, hence the need for them to chart a new course that would make them relevant and productive in the scheme of things.
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