Nigerian University Of Technology & Management’s Founding Class Of 2021 Scholars’ Graduation Programme

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COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS BY HIS EXCELLENCY, PROF. YEMI OSINBAJO, SAN, GCON, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF NIGERIA AT THE NIGERIAN UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY AND MANAGEMENT’S FOUNDING CLASS OF 2021 SCHOLARS’ GRADUATION PROGRAMME ON THE 18^TH OF SEPTEMBER, 2021

PROTOCOLS

It’s a special honour and pleasure for me to join you today at this first graduation ceremony of this extraordinary institution, the Nigerian University of Technology and Management (NUTM) – the fulfilment of the dream of a place of transformative innovation in higher education. And perhaps more importantly, to witness the graduation of the first Cohort of the NUTM scholars Programme.

Congratulations to you all, the class of 2021!

I am privileged to have been a part of the NUTM dream from its inception – a best-in-class hub for learning, and research to train the next generation of leaders in technology and management in Africa. With a vision is to be ranked amongst the top 50 global institutions focused on technology and management by the year 2030.

This is an important target because of the 100 most innovative universities compiled by Reuters, and these are institutions that filed 70 or more patents with the World Intellectual Property Organization within the first five-year period of the study. There are no universities in that top 100 located in Africa, South America or Oceania.

This notorious deficiency is first a function of the lack of private or public sector resolve to build those sorts of institutions and only second the resources to create such an institution.

Gratefully, we have now found such a convergence, the founders of NUTM, themselves educated in the best universities in the world and well-established successes in the private, public and civic spaces, have come together to do the heavy lifting of establishing a world-class institution of technology and management. This initiative is crucial because the most significant problems of this generation and especially in Africa will require innovation in science, technology and the management sciences, especially entrepreneurship and innovative leadership if we stand a chance of resolving those problems.

And I think sitting before us today, the graduands of the NUTM scholars’ programme, we might just be beholding the men and women with the answers to some of the world’s most significant challenges. And there are many challenges indeed.  We need to invent and produce cutting-edge Artificial Intelligence applications for education, business, medicine, and security.

We need to design the educational innovation required to train millions of children in and out of classrooms all across the country and in our continent and provide the techniques for delivering opportunities in technology on scale.

Clearly in agriculture, we need to invent advanced devices, precision agriculture methodologies, and robotic systems that will guarantee huge yields per acreage or volumes in dairy and livestock to meet the food security needs of a country headed for the third position in global population size in a few short years.

We are waiting for the breakthrough in the treatment of peculiar African health challenges such as sickle cell anaemia, fibroids and cancers. There is so much to do and a very long way to go, but we know that ground-breaking innovation in technology or commerce will always be the product of the work of well-trained people. This is why the NUTM scholarship programme was designed, to offer leading-edge knowledge in technology, entrepreneurship and design; management perspectives in breakthrough leadership ideas, critical thinking and writing.

The goal is to train and equip highly sophisticated crack technology innovation and management experts. You are the first cut of that dream team. We are holding our breath waiting for you to step into your destined role.

Three things I’d want you to take away – first is that every major innovative breakthrough in science, technology or the social sciences was the product of patient collaborative work, sometimes across nations. There is no innovation yet around the hard and sometimes long task of creating rare value.

Second, the reason why most people will never attain significance is that they are only interested in themselves and their personal successes. To earn significance, one must do something much bigger than oneself, a big idea, a massive game-changer should always be your target. All of this training cannot be for personal success, it doesn’t just make sense. There must be something bigger than yourself that is waiting for you to set your hands upon.

Third, is developing a mindset that you are as good as anyone who has ever developed a game-changing idea. This is crucial, the testimony of all of those who were involved in your training is that you are as good or even better than some of the best in the world that they have ever encountered.

Problem-solving innovators are after all men and women, not spirits. And this is important because the way not to achieve is to have a mind that is incapable of seeing huge things and seeing the success of doing big things.

Let me tell you a quick story, years ago I sat next to a former Governor of a State in Nigeria on a flight back from Dubai. He was Governor of a fairly rich small State.

The man had been receiving medical treatment in Dubai and as we sat there, he said to me “look at this Dubai, fantastic, these people are great, the roads are too good, the hospital I went to for treatment was first-class. Everything here works, this is a fantastic country. They even manage to grow grass and flowers in the desert. What kind of people are these?”

As I listened to him, it dawned on me that he didn’t realize that he could make his own State even better than Dubai. That those who built Dubai are men and women, not spirits. That he could build good roads, build better bridges, that he could build state-of-the-art hospitals and schools, and all of these things are possible.

The first obstacle is conquering the idea that it is somebody else other than myself or yourself that will solve the problems confronting us. This is the first obstacle that we must deal with – you and I are more equipped than even the generations before us to deal with the problems that confront us.

Let me reflect on your journey to get here, we have heard that you had to go through a pandemic, working through a pandemic, masks on, to be able to get to this point where you are graduating!

Let me say to you that it is a metaphor for life and the things to come. You’re always going to have to work through challenges, day by day. Some tough, some global such as the pandemic, some local such as in your own country and the various challenges your country faces. But at the end of the day, if you set about your tasks in the way that you have set about this, working daily, hard work and with the confidence that you have approached this, you will win every time.

Let me again commend the founders, management and academics of the NUTM for the great work that has brought us this far and remind us that the hard work of delivering on the high-soaring vision of this institution would require all you that we can give every single day.

Congratulations again to the graduands and to the family and friends who are here today.

Thank you very much for listening.