AN ADDRESS DELIVERED AT THE TENTH CONVOCATION OF
LEAD CITY UNIVERSITY, IBADAN.
BY
PROFESSOR GABRIEL B. OGUNMOLA FAS
CHANCELLOR
LEAD CITY UNIVERSITY, IBADAN.
THURSDAY 9TH NOVEMBER, 2017.
His Excellency: Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, GCON, SAN, Vice-President Federal Republic of Nigeria.
His Excellency, Senator Dr. Isiaq Abiola Ajimobi, The Governor of Oyo State & Chief (Mrs.) Florence Ajimobi, The First Lady of Oyo State
His Excellency, Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola, Governor, State of Osun
Oyo State Commissioner for Education Prof. J.A. Olowofela & other members of the State Executive Council
The GOC 2nd Mechanized Division, Nigerian Army, Major Gen. C.M. Abraham
Chairman of the Board of Trustees, Lead City University, Prof. J.A. Aladekomo
The Pro-Chancellor and Chairman of Governing Council, Lead City University Prof. Jide Owoeye
The Vice Chancellor, Lead City University, Ibadan, Prof. Remi Adeyemo
The Executive Secretary, NUC, Prof. Rasheed Adamu Abubakar
The Registrar of JAMB, Prof. Isiaq Oloyede
Top Government Functionaries at both Federal and State Levels
The Registrar, Lead City University
The Bursar
The Librarian
Deans of Faculties
Chaplain of Convocation
The Public Orator
Members of Senate and Congregation
Members of the University Community
Visiting Pro-Chancellors, Vice Chancellors, Provosts and Registrars of our Sister Institutions
2017 Enterprise Graduates
Parents, Friends and Well-Wishers
Gentlemen of the Press, Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen
The Chaplain of Convocation, Venerable Godwin Daramola, I thank you for your prayers. This is the 10th Convocation prayer blessedly entered into the Lead City University book of prayers of Convocation and May God accept your supplications for Lead City University, our State and our Nation. We have faith, we have hope and we believe in God for his sustenance of the noblest of our intension in building a University.
I offer a very special warm welcome to our special guest of honour His Excellency, Professor Yemi Osinbajo (SAN), the Vice President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria to this 10th convocation ceremony of Lead City University, Ibadan. We feel highly honoured by Your Excellency’s presence with us today, as a good encouragement to us in our commitment to all we do here, in our mission to produce worthy graduates to meet the skill and manpower needs of this nation. We thank your Excellency for your graciousness as we look forward to your Excellency address to the 10th convocation, Lead City University, Ibadan.
I welcome all of you, our Graduants of today, your families and friends.
I continue as always to remind you on an occasion like this that this is your University, you have today become its Alumnus for life, you must believe in it, help to build it and feedback unto it with gratitude with the great profit of your acquired education and the proceeds of your labour.
You must work along other compatriots to build a country different from our current situations. It is our pride to have the new set of ‘Enterprise Graduates 2017’ pass through our portal and glad to be able to send you out to excel in the wider world and to continue to add more laurels to the one you are receiving today.
Our honourary degree recipients of today are people of outstanding achievements and worthy role models for you to emulate for the achievements that they have made in different areas of life. We would listen with delight to the public orator as he presents them for their respective honors. I offer you my congratulations!
We must continue to thank our proprietor and benefactor for the continued support in resources made available to this University in its expansion of facilities, content of our academic programme in our aspiration to be a University of high ranking in the nation and globally as well. We will continue to enhance our academic programs based on needs, and future trends. With support from our Board of Trustees, the Chairman and members of Council, the Vice Chancellor and members of Senate, Management and members of Faculties and staff for their valuable contributions to the great strides and achievements of this University, through the efforts of our faculty and students, I would like to express our sincere gratitude.
We are happy to welcome Professor Remi Adeyemo, an accomplished Professor and administrator who had served this University previously as Deputy Vice Chancellor, as the new Vice Chancellor, Lead City University. He succeeds Professor Femi Onabanjo who has completed his term of office in February, 2017. Hearty Congratulation as we look forward to an inspired leadership during your tenure as Vice Chancellor. He would in due course, inform convocation of the achievements of the University since the last convocation in 2016. We thank Professor Femi Onabanjo, the past Vice-Chancellor for his services to Lead City University. We wish him well in his new endeavours.
To our 2017 graduating students and their family and friends, Lead City University, Ibadan shares this joyful day with many and all of you. This day will be an extremely happy one. You are graduating from a University of higher standard created to serve our nation, our world and humanity. You do have a splendid future in front of you. There is hope in each and every one of you and about Nigeria’s future despite all of our many challenges. It is on the solid strength of your character and a sense of high responsibility that Nigeria will progress and become a prosperous and become a developed nation. Let us own this country, it is ours to build and develop by our very energies and patriotism. Let us serve our nation with the best of our abilities. When you reach my age, Nigeria would be your investments in its future through your contributed skill and enterprise have eliminated poverty and be in the ranks of the best 20 economies in the world. Some of you would have climbed your way to the top ladder of leadership companies in the world, while others will have created such companies as well. Some will be leaders in government, and some learned University Professors. A number of you will choose to dedicate your lives to helping others through philanthropy or by bringing up families. The one certainty is that you will all face challenges but you have received the training here of a good University to overcome those challenges. As you have survived here in the past four or five years at this University, you can survive almost anything.
You or your parents have paid a great deal for you to have the opportunity to be here and to have achieved success. One thing that must be of public interest is the fact that we have more capacity than the number of students that we are graduating today. This is a scenario common to most Private Universities many of which are operating below 50% capacity as many qualified students could not take advantage of what we offer because their parent could not fund their tuition. Also, there is this pervasive but clearly erroneous perception that the Nigerian University system cannot admit all aspiring candidates. To the best of my knowledge, we have more spaces in our 146 universities to accommodate qualified students from all over the West African Sub-region but the problem of access remains scarcity of resources on the part of those willing to attend fee paying institutions. This should challenge this nation’s government at the Federal, State and Local Government levels to put their budget, grants to support indigent students’ aspiring into any tertiary institutions where they have been offered placement irrespective of the character of proprietorship of the institution be it public or private. I know the Vice-Chancellor would have more to say on this in his own address very shortly.
Once again, I congratulate parents, sponsors and all the enterprise graduates of 2017 at Diploma, Bachelors and Masters Degree levels. May you fulfil your dreams for yourself, our dear Nation and the World at large.
God bless you all and God bless our country, Nigeria.
Thank you all for your kind attention
Professor Gabriel B. Ogunmola FAS
Chancellor,
Lead City University,
Ibadan.