President Muhammadu Buhari has stressed the need for a paradigm shift in the focus and orientation of Nigerian graduates towards job creation and self-employment.
To this end, the president urged universities to develop new curriculum that would lay emphasis on how to achieve the objective of job creation and employment.
He spoke yesterday at the 12th convocation of the National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN) in Abuja, where the institution graduated a total of 28,740 students.
Buhari, who is the visitor to the institution, commended NOUN for stepping in to address the challenge of access to higher education.
Represented by the executive secretary, National Universities Commission (NUC), Prof Abubakar Adamu, he said the government was committed to making education affordable to all through the open and distance learning mode.
He said; “It is through this mode that the national policy on education makes provision for lifelong learning that transcends all areas.
“My administration will continue to support the operations of NOUN by giving priority to the provisions of critical human and material infrastructure through increased annual budgetary allocations and constant interventions from the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFUND).
“It is the government’s determination to adjust the nation’s entire educational curriculum towards emphasis on entrepreneur education and societal relevance.
“There must be a paradigm shift in the focus and orientation of our graduates towards job creation and self-employment. For this objective to be realised, our universities need to develop a new curriculum that will lay emphasis on these two objectives – self-employment and job creation.
“It is gratifying to note that the National Universities Commission has almost completed work on comprehensive engineering of the curricular of all programmes in our universities. This should not only stimulate increased productivity but also reduce unemployment among our youths.
“It is our hope that Nigerian graduates especially, the fresh ones, will utilise these opportunities by embracing all the various programmes already established by government.”
Earlier, the vice chancellor of NOUN, Prof Olufemi Peters, said the institution graduated a total of 28,740 students that have passed the prescribed examinations across various disciplines and have accordingly been adjudged ‘worthy in learning and character’ to receive their respective certificates.
“At the undergraduate level, we are presenting a total of 21,339 students. Of this, 6 students made first-class degrees; 2,306 students had second class upper division; 11,075 had second class lower division and 5,558 had third class degrees,” he said.
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