By Gloria Emmanuel The Federal Government Monday said that the introduction of Entrepreneurship Education as compulsory General Studies (GST), course for all undergraduates in 129 universities will help tackle the current insecurity and reduce the high level of graduate unemployment facing the nation.
This was the position of the Minister of Education, Ibrahim Shekarau, at the open ceremony of annual National Entrepreneurship Week (ANEW), organised by the National University Commission (NUC) in Abuja.
This is even as the NUC disclosed that 15 universities in Nigeria are already offering B.Sc Entrepreneurship Education in addition to building of Entrepreneurship Centres across the institutions.
The Minister tasked all universities in the country to ensure that Nigerian graduates strive to acquire skills that would enable them compete favourably with their counterparts across the globe.
He said the challenges of insecurity such as graduate unemployment, poverty, youth restiveness manifested in form of cultism, drug abuse, terrorism were indications of poor knowledge or lack of graduates’ knowledge and skills of entrepreneurial education.
Shekarau, who was represented by the Executive Secretary of NUC, Professor Julius okojie, said emphatically that promotion of entrepreneurship education was a recipe for addressing social and economic insecurity.
He said there was the urgent need to bridge the gap between university research and the industry in order to encourage productivity among the Nigerian graduates.
The minister also expressed delight that NUC had responded effectively to the Federal Government’s directive to introduce entrepreneurship education in all tertiary institutions and that NUC has gone ahead to incorporate the course into the Benchmarks Minimum Academic Standards of Nigerian Universities in 2006/2007 session.
According to him, “It is my pleasure to inform you that Entrepreneurship Education is compulsory in all 129 universities in Nigeria. In addition some universities offer entrepreneurship education at the undergraduate and postgraduate level. Today the course has been adopted as one of the universities’ strategy of producing functional graduates”.
The Minister noted that since no nation could developed without entrepreneurship education, he gave matching order to all universities that are yet to establish an Entrepreneurship Centre to do so as soon as possible.
Shekarau said the ANEW forum was a clear testimony of the Commission’s foresight in providing opportunities for mentoring students and allowing them to demonstrate their innovative ideas in solving critical challenges of their communities.
Earlier, the deputy the Executive Secretary of NUC, Prof Chinedu Mafiana, who represented Prof. Okojie, said the introduction of entrepreneurship education in 2006 by the federal government was a deliberate policy adopted to inculcate relevant skills for survival and global competitiveness.
In his words, “I would therefore like to reiterate that the 2014 ANEW programme is initiated to stimulate and equip our students, with necessary tools and know-how to contribute to socio-economic development of the nation and eventually compete globally.
“The intention is to produce graduates with entrepreneurial skills that would ultimately become employers, job-providers rather than job-seekers and ultimately, the nation would be proud of having a new breed of enterprising future leaders rather than followers,” he said.
