President Muhammadu Buhari has stressed the need for a paradigm shift in the focus and orientation of Nigerian graduates toward job creation and self employment.
To this end, President Buhari urged universities to develop new curriculum that will lay emphasis on achieving the objective of job creation and employment.
He spoke at the 12th Convocation of National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN) on Saturday in Abuja, where the institution graduated a total of 28,740 students.
Buhari, who is the Visitor at the institution, commended NOUN for stepping in to address the challenge of access in higher education.
Represented by the executive secretary, National Universities Commission (NUC), the President said the government was committed to make education affordable to all through the Open and Distance Learning mode. It is through this mode that the National Policy on education make provision for life long learning that transcend 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 government 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 realize, our universities need to develop new curriculum that will lay emphasis on this two objectives-self employment and job creation.
“It is gratifying to note that the National University Commission has almost completed work on comprehensively 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 utilize this 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 degrees.
“At the undergraduate level, we are presenting a total of 21,339 students. Of this, 6 students made First-Class degree; 2,306 students had Second Class Upper Division; 11,075 had Second Class Lower Division and 5,558 had Third Class Degree.
“We also recorded 279 students’ Passes. We are graduating a total of 2,057 students in the Bachelor of Nursing Science Programme. 85 of these are graduating with distinction; 1,231 are graduating with credit; while 75 are graduating with pass degrees in the new classification system,” Prof. Peters stated.
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