…how IUO conquered the underemployment, unemployability and unemployment syndromes for our graduates
The Vice Chancellor of Igbinedion University, Okada, IUO, Professor Lawrence Ikechukwu Ezemonye, who is a professor of Ecotoxicology and Environmental Forensics in a chat with selected journalists spoke extensively on IUO’s ten years old product exhibition, how the hydra dreaded devil called underemployment and unemployment was properly tackled by IUO, the steps taken to alienate it and get the university students well armed for the future, adopting entrepreneurial skills acquisition and programmes designed to make an IUO graduate prepared for global engagements.
Hear him:
Who is Professor Lawrence Ikechukwu Ezemonye?
I am a Professor of Ecotoxicology and Environmental Forensics and I am proud to say that I am a fellow of the academy of science by the special grace of God amongst other related fellows that I am in the academia.
I am currently the Vice Chancellor Igbinedion University, having served as a two time Vice Chancellor Of University of Benin under two different Vice Chancellors, so today I am the Vice Chancellor of Igbinedion University, Okada by the special grace of God.
VC let’s congratulate you first on the success of your students product exhibition today. How long have you been holding this programme and what is the essence of this programme?
A: This programme has been on for the last 10 years, as a matter of fact, today’s ceremony is highly symbolic and significant because it is the 10th anniversary of this programme, this product exhibition.
And the real thought behind this product exhibition is the manifestation of the drills and the trainings that we have gone through in the last 8months that has materialized and crystalised into this. In other words, this product exhibition is the crystalisation of the training the students have had in the last 8months to produce entrepreneurial programme.
Again it reflects the maturity of the entrepreneurial mindset which we intend to inculcate in them. So what we have seen today in the 13 different skill sets is the clear testament of an entrepreneurial mindset at work, period, that is what you have seen.
Q: How is this year’s edition different from what you have seen in the past; are there new things that happened this year?
A: Yes, every year reflects new trajection and that is because of the availability of knowledge in the ensuing years. What we knew yesterday is not the same thing as what we know today.
You will see that in the recent past, thought were more on the analogue entrepreneurial thinking but today the entrepreneurial thinking is more digitalized, it is ICT driven. InfoTech and HiTech are the real technological prowess that are driving entrepreneurship.
So what we have seen today is a reflection of the revolution that we are on now, the digital revolution and that is what we have seen today.
So this year’s product exhibition is really HiTech and it has been embellished so much now with the new hub that you saw, the digital hub that is the hub for innovation and creativity; so it shows a significant difference to what used to happen in the past.
But that is going with the time, the university moves with the time. The university does not stand still while the stock market sleeps, the university must grow because it is a global market that we are all shopping from, so for you to remain globally competitive, it must go with the time.
And that is why this university has a mantra of smart campuses and that is what you see today and we are happy that we are beginning to have a reflection of those thoughts, we are very happy.
Why emphasis on the entrepreneurship?
Okay, you see, first of all I had my worries with the proclamations from industries, when they tell us that the graduates are not fit for purpose in the industries and you see, it worries me so much and I began to wonder what is responsible for that.
With a few group of intellectuals, we found out that, not that our students are not properly groomed but that there is disconnect between the demand of the industry and the products, the output.
It is not an affront to anybody, it is not even at a disadvantage to the university, it is just that there is no merger. You see, the Nigerian educational system and the industry portfolios were working in silos.
The industry does not want to merge with the university and the university as an ivory tower does not have the time for the industry but all that have changed now.
So that is why we felt that we must make students that are future ready and that is the mantra I brought into this university, the future readiness. How can a student be future ready?
A student that is future ready is free from three things; one, unemployment, two, under-employment and three, unemployability and for you to avert those three syndromes you must be entrepreneurially groomed.
So here in this university, the first thing we do is to inspire and stimulate entrepreneurial thinking amongst our students, that is number one.
The second thing we do, is to provide the knowledge base and knowledge exchange for the transaction of entrepreneurial thinking amongst students.
And the third one is the one you witnessed today, which is the actual exhibition of the products of the inspiration, the stimulation of entrepreneurial thinking among our students.
Q: I noticed the gap between industry and the universities and now you are trying to bridge that gap. I was going to universities interviewing researchers and most of the times I discovered that the research is like just educational research, let’s do it and get certificates, not really working to fit in.
Let me tell you what we have done here in Igbinedion University. You see, I have been working in the last 10 years on industry-academia integration and so in Igbinedion University, what we have done is to imbibe the principle of co-development of programmes with the industry, co-design the programme with the industry, we co-deliver the programme with the industry, co-supervise the programme with the industry and co-graduate the programme with the industry. And the success stories have been recorded.
In my university, all post graduates programmes are supervised by an academic and an industry supervisor, here in this university, so, but it is logical.
If an industry expert and an academia designs a programme together, delivers teachers the programme together, supervise the programme together, in some cases co-fund the programme together and graduate the students together, there is no moral basis to say that that graduate is not fit for the industry, that is number one.
Let me also tell you what we have done in this university and you need to take this away. This university has a board of industry-academia interface headed currently by the DG of NOTA (National Office for Technology Association) and we have industry partners and academia in that board and they meet quarterly and what do they do, they review curriculum and industry demands.
Today we have a project with Cortis PLC, we are co-designing dedicated programmes for RENA in our engineering department and they are providing opportunities for students and staffs both for sabbatical and internship.
So that is the partnership that we have established in this university that our mainstream academia-industry interface as a way of life in our university programme.
So to answer your question, if you get the industry together to participate with you, tear down the silo walls and remove the toga of ivory towerism then we won’t have this problem.
I can tell you for free now that before now I used to advocate that unemployability was the main cause, was worse than unemployment, yes! You know you graduate and they tell you that you are not fit for purpose.
You know the worse one now, the worse syndrome that is now operating in the valley of death is underemployment, when a graduate now earns N20,000 N30,000, that one is dehumanizing.
So one singular way in averting them is through entrepreneurship, employ yourself.
Q: Today I noticed something, a pharmaceutical student came first in the catering competition, she shared the first position with Computer Science student, these are science related people not marketing and all that. Now there the story of this lady..
Before you continue, just hold your story, last year, the best student was a nursing student.
After a very strong competition I think in Shell or so and the lady now came for the exams and for the final shortlistment and she asked, what can you do outside all these administrative works and all that? She said that she is a very good cook and the panelists now said madam, go and cook for us and she cooked for them. They said outside cooking what else can you do, she said I play the piano very well, she is an engineer by profession, they said go and play the piano and as she was playing the piano, they were all busy eating, the panelists were eating and after they finished eating, they now said you have been employed as the MD. What they needed to know was that outside administrative duties and that is what I saw happened here today. From all you have said so far, what Igbinedion University is doing is to produce the complete graduate, am I with you?
Yes.
And how can we define a complete graduate?
Any graduate is defined as complete graduate is the one that is future ready.
We have seen a lot of innovations …..
You see this university we set standards for ourselves and we attain new heights.
So we have seen clearly that it is an institution that is innovative and along the line you mentioned the hub. So what other areas from business do you have innovation showing in the university?
You see our university, I will look at two areas; I will look at the ICT area and then I will look at our centres of excellence. Let me take the centre of excellence.
We have the Buratai centre for security affairs, this particular centre has representatives of all the forces in Nigeria here on the board and this particular centre is on contemporary security affairs, local and international, mark my words.
The Defence Intelligence Agency, has a representative on our board and it is partnering with this university soon for graduate programmes in their area.
The civil defence and security authorities are with us; the civil defence administration, we had a workshop we just finished, these are people who are partners of this university.
The IG has a representative here. The current chairman of the Police Commission Solomon Arase, former IG is a member of that board and he has even donated books to the centre, it is a pure centre of contemporary security affairs that transcends local, national and international studies on security.
What has gone wrong, drug abuse, racketeering, cyber crimes, international diplomacy and that is what the centre is for and every year they have an annual colloquium on contemporary issues and we are planning one for this year and this year’s own will be on trans-boundary crimes because that is the in-thing now. They steal a car in Nigeria, you see it in Cotonou, that is one centre.
We also have a centre for Climate Change and SDGs and that is the centre that is driving our soilless farming techniques and circular economy, highly innovative, not just for innovation sake, they are contemporary. Today we are talking about zero waste, that centre is the one.
Do you know that in this university, we have plastic bailer machine, that reduces plastic to bails and we have a mandate now in the next one month to remove 70,000 plastics from Okada environment, oh yes, it is here on campus.
In collaboration with Eco capital and Coca Cola Foundation and Edo state waste management, that is what that centre does.
We have the centre for entrepreneurship which you have seen today now, that one is purely skill acquisition. We have our hub.
We have a centre for leadership and governance and because of the centre for leadership and governance, we have infused our student into every committee in this university to learn governance and to learn leadership, it is part of the recommendation of that centre.
Then we have a centre for presidential studies, obviously so and understandably well. So these are areas that are hell bent on innovation.
The post graduate school is not left out because the post graduate school is one thriving industry-academia interface. Our post graduate school could be seen as one of the leading schools in the triple helix model where we bring government…
Today now we saw SMEDAN with the academia and we have just started partnership with them and by 15th or 16th, the university and I will be visiting them in Abuja to complete that.
We would like to have a national conference for SMEs on grant assessment. It is sad to hear at the end of every year, that bankers declare they are returning funds that cannot be assessed, why?
That is what we are taking to SMEDAN when we get there on Thursday.
So you see that, what we have also done is to infuse this entrepreneurial thinking in all our programmes.
This university has an executive business school that will be starting again by September this year, the building in Sapele road is just holding us back. We have affiliate business schools that are ready to work, that have entered into partnership agreement with us.
And that executive business school is only for, mark my words, executive business school; there are so many of our executives that are longing of post graduate education if not for anything at least for knowledge exchange and we want to provide a conducive atmosphere for them.
Then the ICT place is a novel on its own. This university runs on an ST1 bandwidth which is 255mbps enough to run a village highly dedicated for university work.
But beyond that we have affiliated our ICT to IT academies, the owners of the world, IT world. We are affiliated to CISCO academy; we are affiliated to one of the best academies for 2022.
We have Mikrotic, Amazon Web Services, we have them, the Google services we have them.
During the COVID, CISCO gave us the WebEx. If you watch CNN, what they use for the webinar is CISCO WebEx, this university has CISCO WebEx.
We have partnership with CISCO, for every 100level student of this university has a GS programme in the first semester which is IT appreciation and it is a professional certificate from CISCO and an academic credit unit from the university.
Our students here are instructors for CISCO, they pass the exams, they do the courses. We can train for other people, yes, that is the level we have gone with IT in this place.
And because we know we must protect our bandwidth, our system in this university has a firewall. A firewall is a product that protects the use of your bandwidth so that the students don’t use them for any other thing.
This place, we have JAMB exams on a yearly basis, the registration have started. We have two sets of 250 platforms, 250 computer ready system platforms for computer based examination.
And that is why in this university, all 100level courses have a CBT exams as their continuous assessment, it is a must, all 100level and 200level, mandatory and we prepare them for the CBT in 100level with IT appreciation on CISCO. So our educational programme in this place is highly tailored.
What is this Igbinedion University really known for because like when you talk about veterinary medicine you talk about Maiduguri, ABU I think their own is Agric vet. What is Igbinedion University known for that strong point?
Igbinedion University is very strong in law. With due humility, we are strong in law but we have four flagships.
Medicine, we just concluded our 17th oath taking programme. Don’t forget that we are the first private university to produce doctors but I am not basking on nostalgia, let’s now go to quality.
The world president of world medical association was here to deliver a lecture and he acknowledged the fact that our students outside this country are excelling, a very rare feat in medicine both in practice and in the academia.
In law, we not only by the special grace of God make first class on a regular basis and best graduating students in some of the programmes in law school but we have SANs on a regular basis from the university including our former dean of law.
Afe Babalola DVC got his first degree here, first class here; so that is where we are coming from.
Then our latest jewel is the Dora Akunyili College of Pharmacy, oh my God, that is a flagship on its own that has now migrated into Pharm D, bachelors in pharmacy, one of the few universities that are currently running it and they are phasing out bachelors of pharmacy, Igbinedion University started Pharm D this year.
We have a drug production plant for disinfectants and antiseptics running in the university as we speak now, so we are producing hand sanitisers and mentilated spirit here.
The information here is too much for one session.
And that is why I prefer to use flagships. The engineering faculty, during COVID, the engineering department provided us with COVID protective cubicles that you passed through, automated, as you are entering, they are spraying you and you are checking your temperature and you cross. They even produce a manual, foot driven, when there is no electricity.
And the department of chemistry and pharmacy produced all our sanitizers and of course during that same period we produced a handbook for parents on COVID.
So these flagships are all there but I can start with law and go to medicine in that order of priority, to pharmacy and to engineering.
You seem to be mentioning new programmes, what new programmes now do you have now and how many programmes on the whole are….?
The University has migrated from 29 departments to 34 departments and from 38 programmes to 55 programmes, the largest in any private university, you can go and check. We graduated from 19 post graduates to 24 post graduates programmes. I don’t know how many private universities have 24 post graduates programmes, so it is enormous.
And you see, that is the dynamic thought of this university, you see our thought cues are driven by the times, it became very relevant that digitalization will rule the world as we stand.
And so the new programmes that we introduced were digitally based programmes to afford our children, the latitude for IT profiling namely BSc Engineering, Mechatronics, that’s number one, BSc in cybersecurity, BSc in Software Engineering, BSc in Environmental Engineering, BSc in Pharmacology.
Then post graduates degrees, PGD, and PhD in Computer Engineering, in Mechanical Engineering, in Sociology, in Urban and Regional Planning, so we introduced 11 new programmes and the beauty of all these programmes I have called now is that all our programmes are fully accredited by NUC and all professional bodies that we are affiliated to.
So when we sit down and talk about qualitative education, I look at qualitative education from the standpoint of regulations and the teaching and learning scenario.
So you see, our educational delivery status now is one that suits entrepreneurial activities because they meet the demands of the time that is what we are doing.
You were the first private university to establish a teaching hospital, tell us a bit more about it.
Of course, you see the teaching hospital predated the university first. It was a medical research centre, it was a centre for medical tourism, that is where you had medical research.
As a matter if fact, it was at accreditation point for any treatment that could not be handled in Nigeria, they come and get a reference letter from Igbinedion Medical Research Centre before it goes abroad and that was huge.
That teaching hospital as you go there, there are three helipads in this Okada, there is a helipad here, there is helipad there, this now brings me to my honourable Chancellor you see because we have narrative, we have given him beautiful rendition of good trajectory but we must also lay emphasis on the starting point.
It started with one man, the vision of one man, who not only was thinking entrepreneurially, he was also a socialist in all dimensions, Sir, Chief Dr. Gabriel Igbinedion CFR, the Esama of Benin Kingdom, he is our founder, he is our proprietor, he is our honourable Chancellor of this university.
That is the dream of one man that has now become a global treasure, that is one major, one great thing amongst others God has used our honourable Chancellor to do.
Today he has been vindicated for making that choice. Probably other businessmen, mogul with him, his own group would have been saying what he is going to do in a social business, there is no money there.
But rather than invest outside, he brought it here, today we have over 110 or 111 private institutions that never dared to walk on that terrain until Sir Chief Dr. Gabriel Igbinedion ventured that bold step.
So he is a man that will continue to receive national honours on his giant stride in educational development in this country; whether you like it or not, Igbinedion University opened the gateway for private incursion in education centre, we are happy to be pioneers.
Now that you have mentioned your founder, we want to ask that very soon, the University will be having its 20th convocation; do you think that you have achieved the vision of the founding father of this university? By relating it to the products you have and the impact they are making for humanity and the dream that he mentioned that is now a global trend.
Now let me tell you something, we can discuss this in the context of the vision of the university, it is to be a centre of academic excellence through teaching, research and knowledge production in response to contextualize national and global needs.
Today we describe our graduates as, not just graduates, they are blue sky graduates, if you know what that means. Top rated graduates, the blue sky is on the top, high flyers and that is one of the visions.
I told you, how our students are excelling everywhere in all discipline, it is the vision that our founder had, that he should set up a centre, the full time job of the centre is to produce excellence through teaching and research but in the context of national and international demands.
Our students are all over the place now, working in every part of the world and have met international demands.
So you want to ask me, what is the mission that is driving that vision and I will be in a hurry to tell you; it is to pursue excellence in teaching, research and scholarship this time now, through the provision of world class facilities and opportunity for education, training and employment to all particularly those who are able to benefit without any form or discrimination.
Let me talk about discrimination. We did matriculation last Saturday and I was so happy to let the parents know that the university is cosmopolitan in nature; we have students from every part of the states including the federal capital.
There was a time we had people from every local governments in the 774 local governments, we do not discriminate.
Today now, you saw that we started with Christian prayer and we ended with Muslim prayer that has been the culture of this place.
We don’t have any gender bias, rather the women are even taking over, they have exceeded their 25 percent affirmation quota and they are all over the place.
We are consistently meeting the dreams and vision of our honourable Chancellor and every year we pledge our determination to uphold that dream, every year.
And somebody will ask me, 25years just by the corner by God’s grace, 23years already, 24years this year and we have done three profiling of this university; we have done the visibility profile, we have done the enrollment profile and we have done the sustainability profile, all of them are on the growth trajectory, all.
And so when you have a sustainability profile that is above 70, the university has not only come of age by God’s grace but has come to stay and sustainable.
Soon students will be making choices of universities to apply for, for their university education; why should those students choose Igbinedion University Okada (IUO) instead of others?
You see, the choice of a university can be based on four platforms. The first one is qualitative educational deliveries which I’ve talked about. The second one is on research development. The third one is on digitalization, we have talked about. The fourth one which is also a driver, is internationalization and partnership.
This university thrives on high class internationalization and has succeeded in maintaining international partners.
You see, every university that does not have a global outlook will not attract quality students.
This university participates in several international programmes, one of them is IVC, that is the International Virtual Consortium, we participate on a regular basis.
We are a bona fide member of the Global Education Partnership comprising of 40 universities all over the world and because of this partnership, our students, before COVID have travelled to over 10 countries, international countries. The last place they went to was Japan before COVID came.
They have gone to Netherlands, they have gone to North Carolina, they have gone to the UK, they have gone to China, through that programme and this global partnership is where we expose our students, international partners to the course, global understanding and they teach them interactions with different cultures, that is number one.
With our UK partners, we have introduced summer classes which I even told parents at the last matriculation, that during summer programmes, I have just received one now, it is on top of my table now, Lancaster University for summer programme on environmental sustainability and cultural variability.
Before COVID we had a partnership with Manchester Metropolitan University for our engineering students to come over for 3D animation studies for three weeks.
Internationalization is what we need for student mobility and once they know it is available in this university, they will come.
So there are four reasons to choose this university.
And these reasons have been established and they are clear and they are on ground. They are no illusions, they are on ground and you saw for yourself today and you are also free to go round to see what we have.
Internationalization status is very robust and when I talk of internationalization, I don’t mean just the north to the north, we have continental links which is Africanisation of our internationalization, so the African base is there.
So these are the reasons we sell to the public to come to Igbinedion University, notwithstanding the serene environment, purely academic.
No visitor, foreign or local that has visited this place, that has not adjudged our environment as very conducive.
