Speeches

40th Convocation Lecture Of The University Of Nigeria, Nsukka

Feb 24, 2011 - Your Excellencies, distinguished ladies and gentlemen, while I have not been privileged to be privy to the reasons that informed the decision of the Governing Council of this University, the University of Nigeria, to afford me the privilege of expressing my thoughts about issues of national development in its hallowed precincts, I think that it is a fair assumption for me to proceed in the belief that this is not a privilege that is lightly accorded, especially when I am not an alumnus.

I am a product of the University of Benin, whose royal purple colours I wear with pride as one of Nigeria's many success stories at building institutions of high learning that provide the breeding grounds for her human capital.

I therefore acknowledge the great honour you do me, the Government and people of Lagos State by inviting me to speak at this Convocation ceremony, the 40th in the series of the formal process that signals end of the production and preparation process of another set of our greatest asset, our human resource, in readiness for the arduous task of national development.

You have magnified this honour by giving me the liberty to choose the subject and I hope that I have not disappointed you or my audience in my choice of subject, which is "Nigeria and its abundance possibilities".

I have chosen this subject for many reasons not the least of which is the fact that in the midst of democracy the challenges that face us, we seem to have dwelt on how challenging things have been in a manner that has diminished our capacity to focus on solutions and opportunities that are inherent in these challenges.

As I said in my address on the 1st October, 2010 to commemorate the 50th Anniversary of our nation's independent existences:

"It is my firm belief that there are more opportunities ahead of us than those that we have left behind us and it is now our responsibility as a people, the leaders and the led, to begin to seek out those opportunities and to work hard to make them count".

"So many years lie ahead of us to make the future we want starting from today. If we set forth at dawn, we can make this journey before dusk."

Therefore I have resolved within myself to use the privilege and authority of my office as Governor to raise hope and demonstrate that there are practical solutions to seemingly intractable problems.

Nothing can be more limiting of the future for these young men and women than to send them out of here today into a most dynamic world with a message of despair rather than hope.

It is therefore my expectation that you will all find hope and see new possibilities and opportunities in our nation after this intercourse.

While I congratulate the University, its academic and non-academic staff and its Governing Council on the occasion of this milestone 40th Convocation Ceremonies, let me assure you that I have no doubt in my mind that our better days are ahead of us.

As I said in my address titled "Democratic Consolidation and Good Governance in Nigeria: A Myth or Reality at the occasion of the 2010 Annual Alhaji Femi Okunnu, SAN Public Lecture at the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile- Ife on the 28th of October, 2010:

"If good governance is measured in terms of access to potable water, per capital income, provision of food, housing, education and healthcare, some monarchies especially in the Middle East are far ahead of Nigeria and they are not democratic.

It is my belief that we are not on the wrong course, and that these societies will still have to deal with democracy at some time and the same can fairly be said of states like Cuba, and North Korea and even China."

The recent developments in Tunisia, Yemen, Egypt and the reactive reforms in Jordan have proved my thesis right

My speech is directed at the youths of Nigeria; including of course the graduating students, recent graduands (whether employed or unemployed), and those of them who are still here as students, gradually making their way diligently in this citadel of sustained scholarship and perseverance.

I believe that in speaking to our youths, I speak to our future and to all the rest of us in society who must retain the qualities of youth as a vital ingredient for survival in our changing world. The American politician, Robert Kennedy aptly captured this idea when he affirmed that:

"This world demands the qualities of youth: Not a time of life but a state of mind, a temper of the will, a quality of imagination, a predominance of courage over timidity, of the appetite for adventure over the life of ease."

Studying in this or any other Nigerian University is a typical test of this spirit of youth. With infrastructure and services hardly enough to go by; several industrial actions disrupting the university calendar; regular power outages, and several other challenges which test their resilience and creativity, the students pull through in the end.

The same is reflected in the sheer determination of professors, lecturers and administrators to do their best no matter what, and our collective insistence on learning as a prime mover of personal and societal development.

As our youths go out of the university gates, it does become quite difficult to keep up this spirit of hope, perseverance and creativity.

Contemporary events and the popular response around the world will further test their fortitude, as they do ours. The newspapers and electronic media will, as usual, bear their tales of crimes big and small. They will speak of political intrigues and stalemates; corruption in high and low places; terrorism, climate induced disasters, inflation, economic depression, unemployment, et cetera.

This is of course not just the story of Nigeria. It is the prevailing account of events in our contemporary world, implicating virtually all countries and all regions. Yet, all these we must always stress, only make up one side of the story.

All told, ours is still a happy, fruitful and ingenious world with abundant promise of a good life for those who observe carefully the trend of things, apply their senses and talents positively and elect to play by the rules.

When the focus is on Nigeria, we will yet see local and international press characterise our country as belonging to the third world; undeveloped or developing, depending on the kindness of the observer.

The problems of education and the low rankings of our tertiary institutions will reverberate. They might linger on the aspects of power failure, bad roads, inadequate water supply, high unemployment and pervasive poverty.

But our youths must look beyond this gloomy canvass and see in the horizon a world full of opportunities and a life full of possibilities. Like a new born, I want every Nigerian to recapture or amplify that spirit of youth and scan our surroundings with fresh and positive binoculars.

A little over 3 (three) weeks after I was elected as Governor, I was introduced to somebody who after asking my age and I told him I was 44 year old, asked me if I was crazy to have accepted the job of Governor of what he thought was Nigeria's most complex State. In his view, I did not stand any chance.

For me, that was a personal challenge. Although I was not in a position to know if we will succeed, I had promised in my inaugural speech on May 29th 2007 that I would not be accused of not having made an effort.

I think it would not be immodest of me to say that our modest efforts have been massively embraced by the people of Lagos, who have transformed their State by sheer resolution and hard work to the first reference for good governance in our country.

That is the attitude I wish to share with you today. An attitude that does not consider failure as a choice, an attitude that nothing is impossible, an attitude that resolves to create everything even when there is nothing.

That is the attitude that has made the telephone possible, air travel a reality, electricity a reality and so many of innovations that now improve the quality of our life. The inventors of these life changing facilities simply refused to accept defeat.

With the little time we have together this morning, I hope to draw attention to the great opportunities that lie ahead of Nigeria, before us all, and before each of us at this very moment. To point especially to our youths, the vivid possibilities they have for self-fulfilment in any part of our great country where each may choose to live and to remark how urgent our assignment to make Nigeria the great country it was meant to be.

To my mind, the bases for hope are incontrovertible. Two of them are most pertinent here.

The first is that there is no reason why any of our graduands should feel limited. This applies to those of us that are similarly educated. Even today, the products of our universities excel in post-graduate institutions all over the world. Education is a life-long endeavour, but by all standards, every graduating student now has a sufficient base upon which to build a successful life.

With the World Wide Web linking us to all the nooks and crannies of the world, there is no subject on which we cannot on our own find information for further studies. In the circumstance, our boundaries of achievement will largely depend on personal industry, enthusiasm and outlook on life.

A person in his youth will have only one rival, that is his own potentialities; and he will have only one failure, that is, failing to live up to his own possibilities.

The second factual basis for hope is that every 'problem' of Nigeria is an opportunity, not only for our vibrant population of youths but also for others of like mind.

If we need more power projects; if we want our public buildings and facilities to be well maintained; if our schools require more trained teachers or more furniture; if public transportation is deserving of more infrastructure, equipment and personnel; whatever inadequacy you can think of, it can only mean that we are in dire need of creative minds and industrious hands who can take on these troubles, wrestle them to the ground and pull us up to a place of pride in the comity of nations.

Indeed, the more of these gaps that remain in our developmental efforts, the more relevant our youths must be as solution providers.

In further exploring this theme, I think the best place to start is the rather astounding report of massive unemployment in Nigeria. To my mind, if ever there was a country of immeasurable employment opportunities, that country is Nigeria.

More than any other nation of our population and size, we have houses, roads and bridges to build. Looking around us, it cannot be hard to see that we urgently require engineers, technicians and artisans in their hundreds of thousands.

With acres and acres of land to farm, we obviously need trained Agricultural Scientists and semi-skilled farm workers. And with such a vast network of inland waterways and contiguity to the sea, we could do with men skilled in modern methods of fishing and fish farming.

Indeed, for a country of 150 million people, we have such an enormous amount of work to do, and we have such alarming shortages of all kinds of professionals – teachers, doctors, nurses, lawyers, firemen, waste management personnel, administrators, etc, who are ready, able and willing to work.

It is therefore a worrisome contradiction that in a country with so much to do and to build we can talk of unemployment.

Some would dismiss these facts on the pretext that even if we had the need, we do not have the resources to engage people to that extent. But I think that cannot be true.

Currently, we are a country that imports everything, including footwear, bags and leather products of all types; clothing materials sewn or unsewn (I should add, new or used); fruits, vegetables, poultry, canned beef and sardines; new and used cars, buses, trucks, trailers and motor cycles. The list is virtually endless.

As we sit in this hall today, I daresay there would be more of our clothes, shoes, bags, caps and wristwatches imported wholly or in part than were made in Nigeria. Even our public address system, computers, voter registration machines, radio and television - all the things that define our lives - are imported from abroad.

Now, it is important to note that these imported items found all over the place were not donated as free gifts to Nigerians. The resources to purchase them originated right here.

The million naira question is - If we can find money to keep foreign manufacturers and suppliers gainfully employed, why can't we find the resources to put our own people to work?

With a population of 150 million and growth rate of 2.27% (almost double the world average of 1.17%), if we do not begin to create goods and services for ourselves, how can we ever resolve the quandary of unemployment?

Part of the problem is our past of misplaced priorities; and once we confront this and commence the repair work, I believe that it will not be long before we are out of the woods.

The Vice Chancellor of the nation's premier university (Professor I. F. Adewole of the University of Ibadan) recently disclosed that the medical school curriculum was being comprehensively reviewed for the first time, although the school was founded as a college of the University of London 60 years ago.

Yet this is just an example. The inescapable reality is that for so long we have neglected the needful. In tertiary education we have left our inherited curricula virtually unchanged. As a result, we have not trained our graduates in tandem with the requirements of our communities. We have produced graduates in the areas where our economy makes no demand for them.

As pointed out by Calestous Juma and Lee Yee-Cheong in their research paper titled "Innovation: Applying Knowledge in Development", (UN Millennium Project, Task Force on Science, Technology and Innovation 2005), we have largely neglected the need for universities to get more involved with their communities, gain direct knowledge about social needs and tailor their research and development activities accordingly.

Innovation can drive our development if more of our universities participate in capital formation projects, such as technology parks, and business incubator facilities, introduce entrepreneurial training and internships into their curricula, and encourage students to take research from the university to commercial and industrial firms.

These writers concluded, rightly in my view, that creating links between knowledge generation and enterprise development is one of the greatest challenges facing developing countries like ours.

This analysis suggests the answers to a lot of questions which confront us today. Where are the tropicalised houses we can build cheaply with locally available materials? Where are the big farms manned by our agric graduates, producing food in large quantities for export?

Where are the made in Nigeria engines for cars, tractors, boats and other mechanised devises? Where are the expert mechanics to repair and maintain these engines and keep our transportation industry on the move?

These questions can easily be multiplied. The best part though, is that each attempt to find an answer opens us to still another fresh world of opportunities and possibilities.

The best illustration of these missed opportunities is perhaps in our oil and gas industry. It was the CBN Governor, Sanusi Lamido that recently awakened us to the fact that the collective output of indigenous oil companies in Nigeria amounts to only 1% of total oil production.

This is despite the fact that the Local Content Act of 2005 set a target of 70% to be attained by 2010. It is an irony of fate that, 50 years post-independence, our indigenous companies have only been able get marginal fields. This is a clear indication that even our biggest industry remains a closet of missed opportunities for Nigerians.

Nigeria must urgently begin the process of harnessing these plenteous potentials not just to create employment for our youths but to develop our society as a whole.

I am certain that as you listen to me, you must be wondering then that if these possibilities exist, why have things not changed?

The answer is simple. We have not tried hard enough; and in sufficient numbers to create the critical mass that will give credibility to the possibility of change.

I am proud to say that in Lagos, we have resolved that talking less and doing more in the surest way to demonstrate that these possibilities are real and within our people's reach.

One or two examples of what we are doing in Lagos State will demonstrate the possible areas to explore nationwide.

First, we noticed that the ability to properly lay bricks, tiles and stones or to carry out electrical and plumbing works were gradually becoming a rare skill in Nigeria.

Despite our teeming population of the unemployed, we began to see an influx of builders and artisans from neighbouring countries who were now more favoured in the building industry.

These events brought to us a realisation that our 5 (five) technical and vocational training institutions were failing in their mission.

We have therefore paid close attention to technical education, providing more funds, retraining the teachers, acquiring equipment and reviewing the curricula to ensure availability of training in the more contemporary areas of need.

Most importantly we are linking these institutions directly with relevant industries where their skills are required for employment after training. A close association now exists between each of the departments and companies in the field so that training is influenced directly by the current demands of industry.

Also, while the teachers are getting further training locally and abroad, the trainees are getting better exposure to practical skill acquisition and employment opportunities already enhanced by the relevance of their curriculum content.

We realised however that the problem is not limited to technical and vocational education. To function optimally in the real world, all graduates of tertiary institutions must possess skills that match the business goals of employers.

Where they can avoid it, employers would not bear the cost of organising extensive training for fresh graduates before putting them to work. Our tertiary institutions therefore have to regain their place as the epicentres of social development by urgently reviewing their course contents.

For instance, it is truly surprising that with the remarkable success of the Nigerian film industry, our Universities are yet to diversify away from the traditional discipline of Theatre Arts when availability of training in such areas as cinematography, script writing, film production and other like subjects will surely do more to improve the output of our film industry.

We are therefore reviewing the academic programmes of the Lagos State University with a view to opening new Faculties in areas of need or new subjects of emerging relevance in existing faculties.

One of these is the recently introduced Faculty of Transport Studies. For a megacity which has enormous transportation challenges and is trying to build not only mass transit bus system, but also a network of railways and ferry routes, we considered this Faculty a matter of urgent importance.

But Lagos should not be an exception. In a country like ours where there are no experts who have had any opportunity or experience of constructing railways or managing transport systems, we will surely need skilled manpower in the area of urban transport management and relevant engineering disciplines if the long term viability of this enterprise is not to be jeopardised at inception.

If we all embark on this specialised training initiative, we can rest assured that even if we engage expatriates to set these systems in motion, it will not be long before our people are able to take over and maintenance will not become an albatross as it has often been in many of our public facilities.

In a similar vein, we have adopted a policy of proper and continuous maintenance in all public facilities, including hospitals, court complexes, schools, roads, etc in Lagos State, all of which create more employment opportunities for skilled and unskilled manpower.

This policy entails the formation of maintenance contracts once these facilities are delivered and the same is being extended to some pre-existing facilities. With the huge opportunities for skilled maintenance works in most homes, I personally look forward to a situation whereby our engineers and technicians set up small businesses to carry on maintenance works in plumbing, electrical works, electronics, etc.

This will not only make life easier for all of us, it will introduce our youths to a culture of productive self employment and job creation.

Still in the areas of services and employment opportunities, I cannot but refer to the tonnes of waste generated in Lagos daily. This has once given Lagos city an unsavoury reputation as one of the dirtiest in the world.

However, the same problem was always heavily pregnant with opportunities and possibilities. Today, refuse disposal in Lagos relies on a network of highway managers and disposal companies under the Private Sector Participation (PSP) scheme.

Several companies engage thousands of people to sweep Lagos clean on a daily basis and several more have purchased compactor trucks to move refuse to dumpsites established and maintained by the State.

This has further created opportunities for us to explore recycling and waste to energy options which science now has on offer. As a fallout of these experiences, similar PSP models are now being employed in the area of water rate collection.

Our experience in the agricultural sector has also been a great revelation of what is possible.

In farming we have discovered unbounded opportunities, despite Lagos having the smallest land space of all the states in Nigeria.

The Lagos State Agriculture Youth Empowerment Scheme (Agric YES) offers intensive and hands on training opportunities for youths at a farm settlement, subsequent to which successful graduates are formed into cooperative societies, settled in farm estates and given seed loans by the Lagos State Microfinance Institution to start their own farming enterprise.

This project is currently supported by an Israeli University sending lecturers to Lagos and offering internship training to the students in Israel. In due course, affiliations will be established with Nigerian Universities which can offer similar services.

The AgricYES programme has opened up a fresh vista of opportunities for youths in Lagos State who are now poised to feed our people, create employment and take their products to the international market.

I believe that a number of similar programmes across the country will hold exciting possibilities for food security Nigeria.

To correct the mismatch between available job opportunities and the qualifications of many unemployed youths, it is my opinion that short conversion courses, either run within or outside the university system will help.

Our model in this regard is the Lagos Ignite Programme. The Ignite Employability Programme bridges the gap between the products of the Nigerian educational system and the needs of employers of labour while the Ignite Enterprise Programme prepare youths who are established or intending business owners/ entrepreneurs, to meet the demands of the business environment.

This is done by equipping them with the unique set of skills required for identifying business opportunities and transforming them into successful enterprises.

The third aspect is the Conversion Programme for arts and science graduates who want to be employed as teachers or healthcare worker.

This is a way of filling the skills gap in the schools and in the healthcare industry by training competent individuals to become Teachers, Public Health Officers, Occupational Therapists, Diagnostic Radiographers, etc.

Despite the current problems earlier identified; and despite the real possibility of Nigeria's population doubling within the next 20 years (with 4% growth rate, a country's population doubles in about 18 years), every tier of government should obviously strive to promote schemes like the ones described above.

It is therefore surprising that the Federal Government would even venture to adopt any policy that directly frustrates local entrepreneurs, job creators and job seekers.

This, unfortunately, is my view of the Federal Government's recent act of lifting the ban placed on the importation of textile materials, furniture, toothpicks and cassava products. I think this is a very discouraging event at a time when our overriding mission should really be to promote made in Nigeria goods.

Surprisingly, the same government which ought to pursue a policy of compelling the establishment of motor vehicle assembly plants in Nigeria has instead raised the age limit placed on importation of used vehicles into the country from 10 to 15 years.

Apart from killing local industry in these basic areas, these policies ensure that our petrodollars will continue to flow outward in return for items which we should really be producing here for our own use or even for export.

In this regard, it is relevant to recall that the number of textile factories operating in Nigeria had fallen from 124 in 1996 to 25, while the number of workers in the industry slumped from 130,000 to 24,000.

I agree that the earlier ban was frustrated by importers using ports in neighbouring countries and smuggling these items in from abroad, but I do not agree that the solution lay in the lifting of the ban. Cheap and easy as that may seem, we just must do the hard work of making our ports more smuggling resistant in order to protect the local economy.

If the gate that protects my house from burglars is being frequently breached, the answer must lie in making the gate safer not in opening it wider and ajar.

We also must overhaul our customs service and make it more effective, no matter how hard that may appear. In the current situation, I have no doubt that unscrupulous importers will continue to smuggle in substandard products which do not meet our standard prescriptions and that the problem of smuggling now swept under the carpet will continue to haunt us as a nation.

The wealth creation model now being promoted by the Federal Government, i.e., import and export, buying and selling or, if you are better connected, simply obtaining and disposing of oil blocks and similar concessions is certainly not the one that will move us to our desired station.

Ladies and gentlemen, what we must go away with from here is the fact that education is more than a ticket to a life of employment; it is rather a pass to endless possibilities.

In a society like ours, each person only has to look around and he will find a need waiting for his talent. Instead of thinking in terms of limitations, let us think always in terms of possibilities.

In the words of Wilferd Peterson, a Newsweek columnist, it is time to:

"explore your mind, discover yourself, then give the best that is in you to your age and to your world. There are heroic possibilities waiting to be discovered in every person."

My dear graduands, please accept my congratulations for having been found worthy in learning and character by this institution of great history and tradition.

The wheel starts to turn again for a new set of fresh students who will experience what you experience today.

You and I owe those fresh graduates an obligation, to make the Nigerian society better for them than we met it.

It will require a lot of hard work and less talk. The truth is that hard work is always rewarded.

I believe that every dream can be realised in Nigeria because I am certain that it is possible. It only requires us to make a genuine effort.

I am ready. Are you?

Thank you.

Babatunde Raji Fashola, SAN
Governor of Lagos State