AN ADDRESS DELIVERED AT THE NINETH CONVOCATION OF LEAD CITY UNIVERSITY, IBADAN.
BY
PROFESSOR GABRIEL B. OGUNMOLA (FAS)
CHANCELLOR
LEAD CITY UNIVERSITY, IBADAN.
THURSDAY, 10TH NOVEMBER 2016.
Your Excellencies:
Kabiyesis
Our Proprietors
Chairman Members of the Board of Trustees
The Chairman and Members of the Council
The Vice-Chancellor
The Registrar
The Bursar
The Librarian
Deans of Faculties
Chaplain of Convocation
The Public Orator
Members of Senate
Members of the University Community
Visiting Pro-Chancellors, Vice Chancellors and Registrars of our Sister Institutions
Distinguished Guests
Graduands
Parents
Friends
The Chaplain of Convocation, Venerable Godwin Daramola, I thank you for your prayers for us and May God accept your supplications for Lead City University, our state and our nation.
We believe in God who has helped us tremendously through the journey over the eleven years of our existence as a University and unto whom our future is assured.
I offer a very warm welcome to you all: parents, families, friends and our worthy graduands; to the 9th convocation ceremony of Lead City University.
It is my delight to speak to you today in Adeline Hall and to admit you to your various degrees as new graduates of Lead City University and to assure you, parents, guardians and the public that Lead City University remains the good choice of the students for a University for producing professionals and entrepreneurs that would continue to support the growth and strength of our nation and mankind.
Our commitment to our student and their future is our priority by the foundation that we are laying in the education that we give our students for life time happiness in the service to our nation and humanity. It is for this reason that we recruit capable staffs both academic and administrative to help to deliver the mission that we have set for ourselves.
It is a great day of joy for our graduating students, their parents and the faculty members who have helped them all the way towards the successful attainment of the goals of our students in achieving a university education. I offer my felicitations and congratulations to all of you on your remarkable achievements. We are proud of you all and you will remain our worthy ambassadors for life.
As you go into the wider world, you will broaden the knowledge that we have imparted in you, and the broader would be the potential scope of your understanding as you will begin to see connections that were not previously visible to you. You will continue to push over boundaries in a self improvement experience beyond the limited space of the four corners of the perimeter of Lead City University that you have inhabited in the last four or five years and to connect to the rest of the world using the skill and education you now have acquired. Our teaching, research and services will continue to sharpen the quality of the training of our graduates in meeting the needs of the society and the wider world that you will inhabit.
This is your University, You have become its Alumnus for life, 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 labor.
You must work to build a country different from currents situations. It is our pride to have the new set of ‘Enterprise Graduates 2016’ pass through our portal and glad to be send you out to excel in the wider world and to continue to add more laurels to the one you are receiving today.
Courage is in being true to yourself and you will by so doing be true to others, your community, the nation and mankind. It’s about holding onto what’s right and holding on to the good in the darkest moment. It’s about holding the hand that needs held. Standing to fight a battle you might lose because there’s simply too much at stake. I wish for you the courage to make the tough choices in life and the humility to be able to ask others to stand with you.”
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 with their opportunity with tremendous relevance in the society. We have today with us a creative scholar, public administration and a creative musician – ‘Our own Mozart’ with uniquely Nigerian music and of global dimension. 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 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 faculty and students. I would like to express our sincere gratitude.
The Vice Chancellor, Professor Femi Onabajo would in due course, inform convocation of the achievements of the university since the last convocation in 2015.
I come this morning with a poser question for our young graduates and all of us today. Can we turn our eyes away from our nation’s conditions at this hour and every hour? No we can’t and we must not!
If we can’t, then it becomes a challenge of your creative energies to continue to build our nation in your service and my service to our nation and mankind. We are destined to be a great nation but it must happen by our resolve and our labour. The food on our table must come from our farming hands. Our researchers must produce substitute raw materials to replace the imported ones. Now, our industries must patronize our research centers for solutions, to our industrial production. We must reduce our consumption and be more productive. We cannot continue to import without restraints and we must think beyond the vanishing oil!
Your teachers and this institution have labored to bring out in you, the skill and training to have a role to play in the community that you will be serving. Our intellectuals and our Institution cannot sit around and expect wisdom to accumulate along with grey hair. We must use it to continue to build this nation.
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 developed nation. Let us own this country, it is ours to build and develop by our very energies and patriotism. Let us save our nation with the best of our abilities.
Write down early in your life career, a clear goal for your life: what you would do if you were called up to lead this country. You too could be the ‘President’ of Nigeria one day! As judged by the content of your character, by the education you have received from this University. Dr Martin Luther King once said and I quote “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character”. He declared in his famous speech that predicted that an Obama would be judged by the content of his character to one day be president of America. Yes it happened in our life time. It could happen to you. That is my dream for you!
May God bless your aspirations and ambitions in life for the upliftment of our dear country. The achievement of each and every one of you will be a matter of pride to Lead City University and ultimately the success of our nation.
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.