The Director-General, National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), Kashifu Inuwa, CCIE has challenged Universities in the country to devote greater attention to enterpreneurship training in order to produce graduates that will create job opportunities, not job seekers.
Inuwa made the challenge while receiving the management of the Federal University of Agriculture Zuru, Kebbi State, under the leadership of its Vice-Chancellor Professor, Musa Isyaku Ahmed.
The NITDA boss described University’s role in finding lasting solution to Nigeria’s unemployment as critical, in view of the large number of young people graduating annually.
“I urge you to continue to emphasize more on enterpreneurship trainings so that graduates can become job creators instead of job seekers.
“Mr President has the passion for job creation, a passion of diversifying our economy and so on, moving from resource based economy to knowledge based or Digital Economy, and for Nigeria to achieve that, we need to have the human capital, which our population is the greatest resources,” he added.
He said most of the people coming out from the universities are becoming liability to the country, because they will come and start waiting for jobs. Instead, why not us start producing people that will create jobs, and to do that you have to start from the universities.
“Universities can be used as mentoring, training and couching grounds to the students, encouraging them to start their own business while in school,” he said.
Commenting on NITDA’s National Adopted Village for Smart Agriculture (NAVSA) programme, Inuwa stated that it was an initiative of the Agency designed to support young Nigerian farmers that are very passionate about making a career in farming.
“Firstly, we all need to eat to survive, how can we increase our produce, how can we use technology to change the way we do our farming, and how can we make it a more fancy job, so that these young graduates can also embrace farming as a career,” he noted.
NITDA, he said, has concluded arrangements to engaging Universities’ research works practically on the farms with a view to achieving the set goal.
“This year, we will re-strategise our process and say why not work with Universities’ research institutions, where most of their works end on the shelves, why can’t we convert those researches and move into the farm to experiment”, added.
Earlier, Vice Chancellor, Federal University of Agriculture Zuru, Professor Musa Isyaku Ahmed, said they were at the Agency’s Corporate Headquarters on a familiarisation visit to further avail themselves with what they have been seeing and hearing about NITDA’s impactful interventions on so many sectors, particularly the tertiary institutions.
Professor Musa who informed that, Federal University of Agriculture Zuru is the only University that came into being from a Bill by the National Assembly, and was assented to by the President as the Agric based, which came on board during the lockdown as a result of COVID-19 Pandemic.
He said the newly established institution has as its mandate, the injection of Enterpreneurship and IT into its curriculum.
While soliciting for the collaborative support of NITDA in its intervention programmes, the Prof also called for paradigm shift in the nation’s education system.
“We are aware of NITDA’s finger prints in many Nigerian tertiary institutions, we here soliciting for same to our newly established Institution,” he pleaded.
By Mansour Aliyu Hassan.