33rd Inaugural Lecture Of Babcock University, Ileshan-Remo, Ogun State On 08/08/2021

• Share:

Video Transcript

REMARKS BY HIS EXCELLENCY, PROF. YEMI OSINBAJO, SAN, GCON, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF NIGERIA AT THE 33RD INAUGURAL LECTURE OF THE BABCOCK UNIVERSITY ON THE 8TH OF AUGUST, 2021

PROTOCOLS

It is a very special pleasure and honour for me to be here with you on this occasion of the 33rd inaugural lecture of Babcock University. This occasion is special for me because the inaugural lecturer is my friend and brother, Prof. Oluseyi Oduyoye.

Prof Oduyoye and I met in 1969 when we were classmates from Form 1 at Igbobi College Yaba, and we have been friends since then, 52 years this year.

Some of our classmates are here; Mr. Tunde Fowler, Mr. Bolaji Akinyemi, Mr. Taiwo Odutola, Mr. Ikwunne who used to be our head boy is also here somewhere, and one or two others I can’t immediately see.

Our set (69-75) is a very close nit one and we meet every second Sunday of every month and we have been meeting for decades. Prof. Oduyoye alias “soccer” has no right of reply on this one but I will spare him today. I am also especially pleased today because, in our set, there are three of us who eventually became Professors, Prof. Seyi Oduyoye, Prof Olukoga (Professor of Medicine) and myself. I am very pleased that we went through the mill and eventually became professors. The others went the way of money, and they have all made tremendous success in their endeavours. So, like some of us here, we are proud academics.

I am also excited to be here at Babcock University, a university that has proved the point that with clarity of vision and excellent scholars and resources, a private university in Africa can compete with the rest of the world.

I am especially impressed with the quality of your graduates of this university; their confidence, sound learning and especially their solid entrepreneurial skills. I have come across them in several businesses, especially in FinTech and several technology enterprises and they have proved to be solid, disciplined and innovative individuals.

This is still a very young university and clearly, the best is yet to come.

I congratulate my dear friend and brother, Prof Oduyoye on this very relevant, contemporary and scholarly lecture. I had the opportunity to browse through it and there’s a lot of material in there which I believe will be very useful for us, especially those of us who are policymakers on the economy and especially for small businesses.

There is no question at all going from the submissions he has made that the economic future of our country will depend on medium and small businesses. The obvious reason is that MSMEs indisputably are the engine of growth in any economy. I think your statistics from other countries of the world bear that out eloquently.

MSMEs also, employ the largest number of people which explains why our government decided to do what is described as the MSME Clinics. This is a commission which I have the privilege of chairing – what the clinics do is that for every State of the Federation, almost on a bi-monthly basis, we work with State governments to support small businesses all across Nigeria.

The MSME Clinics were designed to bring regulatory agencies whose work affects the business enterprises of MSMEs. What we do is to visit the States with the regulatory agencies, (Mr Fowler has been on several of these trips while he was Chairman of the FIRS), we would also go with NAFDAC, SON, CAC. These regulatory agencies would meet with the MSMEs and discuss their various problems.

At the moment, we have about 12 States that have one-stop centers in their States – these centres house the offices of all the regulatory agencies so it is easy for the MSMEs to access NAFDAC, SON and the rest of the agencies.

Our country is a large one and one of the major problems that we have is in trying to use one for instance, SMEDAN (Small and Medium Enterprises Development Agency of Nigeria), one government agency/enterprise to satisfy several different MSMEs and they run into millions.

What we have tried to encourage in the States is a situation where States themselves develop their own versions of SMEDAN so that States are able to sponsor businesses and support them.

In some of the States, we have set up what we call resource centres (Shared Facility), where you build a cluster, for example, we have a cluster for farming in Benue State, where we built a cluster for those who do farming and processing. Farmers who cannot afford their own equipment would come together and use the facility.

We have one that is about to be launched in Ogbunike in Anambra for shoemakers – a cluster there with equipment that can be used by shoemakers in that place.

Incidentally, in Ogbunike, there is export of close to a 1million shoes every month, coming out from there, so it’s a very important cluster. We also have one in Oyo State.

The whole idea is to set up some of these services in different places but the States must accompany the Federal Government in doing this because as I said, it is a big country, this is a Federation.

In many of the countries which the lecturer cited especially in the US, State support is very important. And when you look at the sums we have done, you will see that a million, two million, here and there is the sort of thing that some States, at least, should be able to afford.

One of the things we also did with MSMEs right after COVID is what we call the MSME Survival Fund. The fund gave almost a million businesses support through the payment of 3 month salaries especially private primary and secondary schools, we paid for teachers and several small transporters.  I think some of the statistics will be useful as you further research your work. There was so much that was done and as I keep saying, it is a large country and in order to deal with all of those issues and to be able to support MSMEs in the way that they ought to be supported, a lot more money is needed.

Just one final point on that – the African Development Bank (AfDB) has agreed to support the government with $500million for MSMEs in technology in particular. We think this is something that will be very helpful in addition to the N75billion (Youth Fund) which the government has set aside for young people and small businesses.

We must keep working on small businesses for that certainly is the future of our country, no question at all. Those businesses bring hope, bring jobs and opportunities and I strongly believe that this is the direction where we need to be headed.

As I close, let me also commend the Seventh Day Adventist Church for the investment it has made in education.

I think that this is very commendable indeed and I think this is the direction that several religious organisations must follow.

The real of work of ministry is the work of ministering to the people, especially those who cannot afford to do many of those things themselves. The work that the ministries did is the reason the likes of Professor Oduyoye and I are here because our college was one that was founded by two Christian missions – the Anglican and Methodist missions. They gave quality education at a cheap rate so that we were able to afford it and several of us were able to go to school and be the people we are today.

I believe that is very important that religious organisations see this as primary in all of the tasks and all of the things, they choose to do.

I want to commend the church for this and again, to congratulate my dear brother and friend, Prof Seyi Oduyoye on this auspicious occasion and also to wish him a very happy birthday.