Buhari ask graduates to shift focus to job creation, self-employment

President Muhammadu Buhari has said there must be a paradigm shift in the focus and orientation of Nigerian graduates towards job creation and self-employment.

He said this at the 12th convocation ceremony of the National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN) in Abuja on Saturday.

The president said Nigerian universities need to develop new curriculum that will lay emphasis on the objectives of self-employment and job creation.

“It is government determination to adjust the nation’s entire educational curriculum towards emphasis on entrepreneur education and societal relevance,” he said.

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“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.”

The president maintained that education is the foundation of all developments, be it social economic, political or religious, adding that, that is why he is committed to making education affordable to all through the Open and Distance Learning mode.

“It is through this mode that the National Policy on education makes provision for lifelong 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),” he said.

He however, urged Nigerian graduates especially, the fresh ones to utilize the opportunities created by government in various programmes to create jobs and also urged the graduands to be good ambassador to NOUN and Nigeria at large as they go into the society.

In his remark, the Vice-Chancellor of NOUN, Professor Olufemi A. Peters, gave the breakdown of the graduating students as 21, 339 undergraduates, 7,401 post graduates out of which 58 of the undergraduates and seven post graduates are inmates, adding that six students will be awarded with First Class, 2,306 for Second Class Upper, 11, 075 for Second Class Lower and 5,558 for Third Class.