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Members of the Federal University of Agriculture Zuru and some senior staff of NITDA led by the Director General, Abdullahi
The Director-General, National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), Kashifu Inuwa Abdullahi, has challenged universities in the country to devote greater attention to enterpreneurship training in order to produce graduates that will create job opportunities, not job seekers.
Abdullahi spoke receiving the management of Federal University of Agriculture Zuru, Kebbi State led by its Vice Chancellor Professor, Musa Isyaku Ahmed.
University’s role in finding lasting solution to Nigeria’s unemployment is critical in view of the large number of young people graduating annually, said Abdullahi.
“I urge you to continue to emphasize more on enterpreneurship trainings so that graduates will be able to become job creators instead of job seekers.
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“Mr President has the passion for job creation, a passion of diversifying our economy and so on, moving from resource based economy to knowledge based or Digital Economy, and for Nigeria to achieve that, we need to have the human capital, which our population is the greatest resources,” he added.
He said most university graduates are becoming liabilities to the country because they are waiting for jobs instead of becoming creators of jobs.
“Universities can be used as mentoring, training and couching grounds to the students, encouraging them to start their own business while in school,” he said.
Commenting on NITDA’s National Adopted Village for Smart Agriculture (NAVSA) programme, Abdullahi stated that it was an initiative of the agency designed to support the Nigerian young farmers that are very passionate about making a career in farming.
“Firstly, we all need to eat to survive, how can we increase our produce, how can we use technology to change the way we do our farming, and how can we make it a more fancy job, so that these young graduates can also embrace farming as a career,” he noted.
He said NITDA has concluded arrangements to engage universities to offer research depths required to improve farming yields.
“This year, we are going to restrategise our process and say why not work with universities’ research institutions, where most of their works end on the shelves, why can’t we convert those researches and move into the farm to experiment”, added.
Earlier,Professor Ahmed said they were at the agency to get familiar with NITDA’s impactful interventions across so many sectors, particularly the tertiary institutions.
Professor Ahmed said the Federal University of Agriculture, Zuru is the only university that came into being from a bill by the National Assembly, and was assented to by the President as an agric-based research instution; adding that the newly established institution has injected Enterpreneurship and IT into its curriculum.
“We are aware of NITDA’s footprint in many Nigerian tertiary institutions, we are soliciting for same to our newly established institution,” said Ahmed
