Centre for Entrepreneurial Development can provide huge resources for FULafia — Director

||By Musa Ishaq & Yahaya Ahmed

Question: Congratulations on your appointment as the Director, Centre for Entrepreneural Development. What is the Centre all about?

Answer: The government of developing nations and even of the developed nations came to the realisation that the context of education we operate, presently, is creating students that will just go out there to look for white collar jobs and for developing nations, like ours, where these jobs are not available, it now becomes a problem after graduation. Year-in-year-out, students are churned out of the Nigerian universities without us making adequate arrangement for them to be accommodated into the labour force. It was in the realisation of this that the Nigerian government decided to introduce what it calls entrepreneurial development skills into the curriculum of the Nigerian universities. The essence of this entrepreneurial skills is to create students or graduate students who will be wealth creators, rather than those who will be going to seek for jobs. How we do this is by impacting on them a particular skill that can serve as an alternative to their certificate. That is why the Centre for Entrepreneurial Development has been created in all Nigerian universities. For us, in FULafia, it started in 2012 and we have been on since then.

Question: What is the relationship between the Centre for Entrepreneurial Development and the ITF?

Answer: The two are not related. The Industrial Training Fund (ITF) is meant to impact practical skill on the theoretical aspect of what the students have done in the classroom in their individual disciplines. Let’s take, for instance, you are an engineering student, maybe mechanical engineering, you have been in the classroom listening to theory, what the ITF does is to move you out to a factory where you will be able to practicalise the theory you have learnt in the classroom. That is what they do in ITF. But the Centre for Entrepreneurial Development is about impacting skills that maybe different from what you are studying in the university. You may be a student of economics, history, business administration, accounting, chemistry or medicine, e.t.c. What we do here is that we have about 30 skills that we have identified, there are lot more than that, but we are concentrating on 30 skills. These skills are things that are needed in our society on daily basis, which have nothing to do with the course you have come to study. Some of them maybe confectionery, tailoring and fashion design, GSM repairs, DStv installation, solar system installation and things like that. So what we do here is, outside the certificate you are going out with, we want you to have an additional skill that can serve as a viable alternative to what you have learned. The skill you have acquired can give you the job you need and you will become a wealth creator and begin to employ others.

Question: How has the centre impacted on the students, in particular, and the university community as a whole?

Answer: The Centre for Entrepreneurial Development, in addition to impacting these skills on their students, is supposed to transfer these skills to the host community and the immediate environment that is hosting the university. We do this so that we can now change the fortune of people living within the university and they will now feel the impact of the university. That’s part of the corporate social responsibility of universities. Through that, you make people employable, you give them skill that can make them earn income and you will be reducing social vices that would have come up within the university host environment. Since the inception of this school, we have been trying to do this, although we had some shortcomings, but what we do is that, for the students, every year, the 300-level students are exposed to these different skills. Like I said initially, we have 30 skills, non of this skill is imposed on any student. The students are at liberty to choose that which they want. With that we bring in facilitators. When we say facilitators, we are not looking to lecturers in this case. For instance, like photography, the person coming to teach you photography may not be educated but he has the skill to teach you. That is why we use the word facilitators or instructors in Centre for Entrepreneurial Development rather than teachers or lecturers. So these people come in and teach you the practical aspect of what you are supposed to know and do. In addition to that, we teach the theoretical aspect which makes it easier for you to connect when the practical aspect comes. What we teach in the theoretical aspect is the essence of business and the importance of the business at stake. It teaches the students essence of starting a venture on their own and what it can do to their lives. I normally teach student this as an example, a tailor or a fashion designer that knows what he is doing can sew between one to three clothes in a day.

Let’s assume he is sewing one for N5,000, there are people who charge more than that, that is about N15,000 in a day. When you put N15,000 in a day together for a month, you know what we are talking about, that is N450,000. I doubt if professors are earning that amount. But the irony is that, someone doing that may not see himself to be employed. He will want to put on suit and tie and go and stay in an air-conditioned office. While on the long run what you are taking home may not be up to N120,000 or N150,000 a month. We try to let them understand this importance in the theoretical aspect, i.e., that when you have a business that’s your own and you develop it very well, you can earn better than what any other person can pay you. There is this popular saying that “salary is a bribe you receive to forget about your dream.” Now in entrepreneurial study, we make them realise this, that if you have a dream, you can become somebody even without working for someone. That is how we impact in the life of our students. We believe that with the number of students that are going out every year and the rate at which unemployment rate is increasing, if nothing is done, drastically, to create an alternative to white-collar jobs, then, there is going to be crisis in the near future. That is what we do in the Centre for Entrepreneurial Development.

Question: The dream of the vice-chancellor is to make FULafia the 5th best university in Africa. What is your centre doing to assist the vice-chancellor to achieve that objective?

Answer: The vice-chancellor was with us here, in the centre, last week, and this question you asked came up. He didn’t raise it but we raised it because we are working within the vision of the vice-chancellor. I said, let’s take, for instance, Covenant University students, statistics show that 60 percent of the students get employed within the first one year of graduation. The remaining 40 percent get employed within the first two years. The reason why this is so is because the students of Covenant University are trained to be wealth creators through entrepreneurship. These people are trained to think outside the box to see how they can create job. Because of this, companies preferred them to people who don’t have this kind of mentality. So we have decided that in Federal University of Lafia, we will step up our entrepreneurship activities. What we’ll do now is that, within a semester, three times in a week, we’ll bring in students here for practical. Thus, we have created a blueprint in this centre already, an action plan that will guide us within the first one year. What we have decided to do here is that, outside this official hour which is allocated to them based on our curriculum, we are going to make private arrangement for students who want to perfect the skill they have come in to learn here in such a way that these people will become wealth creators. When we train students to become wealth creators, that will have an impact on our graduates and the rating of our graduates have a lot to do with our rating as a University. That is what we have decided to do. The Covenant University is now rated among the best universities in Africa. At a point, it was the first rated university in this nation, thanks to it entrepreneurship activities. Another university is that of Lagos, the University of Lagos. It was the first to establish the department of business administration and it has been into entrepreneurial development even before other universities started that and, to a large extent, that is affecting the rating of the university. Because of that, we have decided to make entrepreneurial education in Federal University of Lafia more practical and more impacting such that this centre will become a revenue generating unit. We want this place to be busy, busy in the sense that activities will be going on, daily, and people can come in and to learn. If the fashion and tailoring section is working, students who are interested, will be around and they will be learning, if the confectionery section is working, students who are interested will be around and they will be learning, if the catering services is working, students who are interested will be around and they will be learning, that is what we intend to do. In doing this, you discover that our students, after graduation, will prefer to be on their own and this will add to the rating of the University. We see ourselves in the centre adding value and, this way, we will be supporting the dream of the vice-chancellor of making Federal University of Lafia the fifth best university in Africa within the shortest period.

Question: What would you say are the challenges faced by the Centre?

Answer: Well, for now, some of the challenges we are facing are temporary because they’ll soon be addressed. The first challenge is that of space. Most of our equipments are parked in the store, it is only when we have practical that we bring them out to display but, thank God, we have a permanent structure on the permanent site of the University now that’s under construction. Again, presently, we bring in skilled instructors from the town to help us impart their knowledge to students. It is our sincere dream, and plan, that in the nearest future we’ll have these instructors on permanent basis and stop bringing them from outside. If actually we want entrepreneurship education to be stepped up so that students can walk in at any point in time to learn, then, we must have instructors on the ground. For now, we don’t have most of them. We have some tailors on the ground, we have some caterers on the ground, but we don’t have instructors on most of the skills we are imparting. So that is a challenge for us. Again, you know we have the teaching aspect or what we call a tutorial aspect of our courses. The centre does not have academic staff of its own, we rely on academic staff from departments that are relevant to what we do here to be able to handle students. That’s is a challenge, but in the nearest future, we should be able to recruit academic staff that will be domiciled here so that we can have full control over them. Presently, these are the challenges we have, and if we can overcome them, we see ourself doing very well in the nearest future.

Question: Institutions of learning are now encouraged to prepare their students for life after studies. Please, shed light on how your centre is working to prepare FULafia students to become self-reliant when they are out of this place.

Answer: There is what we call an industrial reserve army of unemployed graduates out there and, year-in-year-out, we keep graduating these people. Here, we provide students with skills that can distinguish them when they go out. Instead of waiting for somebody to employ them, they can begin to create wealth for themselves and, in the process, begin to employ some people. I was discussing with one of my master’s students recently when she came in for her dissertation, she regrets that she didn’t have an opportunity to go through the entrepreneurial instructions while in the University but during her NYSC, she decided to learn confectionery. Now, she bakes cakes and do all those things and she knows what that is adding to her life now that she is doing her masters degree. So this is what we are doing, teaching students skills, that will be rewarding to them financially. Rewarding to the extent that you will prefer to dump your certificate and continue with the skill they have acquired here. That is the dream we have. We want to give you a skill that will make you prefer to continue with that skill rather than go to the labour market to look for job. Once you become self-employed, you will help in reducing the army of unemployed graduates we have out there.

Question: Sir, where do you see the centre in the next four years?

Answer: I made a promise to the vice-chancellor when he was here, recently, that within the next one year, we may not be coming to the vice-chancellor to request for funds to do some certain things again. We may be able to create money through our activities. We have a lot of industrial sewing machines here, we have a lot of equipments for the 30 skills we impart. We have decided to commercialise what we teach people. Instead of waiting for when practicals come to bring out the machines, the machines should be put to use frequently. We are going to send out flyers very soon, to inform the University community that our fashion design section, or tailoring section, is running and people should patronise us. Bring your clothes in, we have experts here that can help you handle them. Through that, we will be generating funds for the centre. We’ll produce a lot of things here. Among the skills we impart here are soap making, detergent making, air fresheners and things like that. There is no office in this University that does not buy all these things, you have toilets you need air freshener and things like that. Instead of waiting for when students will do practicals for us to have these products, we have decided that since we have what it takes to produce, why not produce and market these products? There is what we call a business unit in the Centre for Entrepreneurial Development. The business unit is supposed to make this place viable, commercially. It’s the responsibility of that unit to teach students how to produce, tell them what to produce and market the items produced. And when you see what we market, you will be interested in coming to learn the more. We want to even extend our services to staff so that within their leisure period, they can come in and learn one or two trades that may not be conflicting with their work. Let’s say you learn tailoring now, you can decide to sew your clothes yourself, rather than giving it out to somebody to sew for you and you pay. This is what we are doing. So within the next four to five years, what we are thinking is that we’ll convert the Entrepreneurial Development Centre to a revenue generating unit through our activities. We’ll have our products branded with Federal University of Lafia logo on it. I know that when people see the University, they tend to trust the product more than any other product of its kind and that is what we have decided to do. So, in the next five years, we see this centre becoming a viable centre for the University rather than one that is drawing from the pool always.

Question: How many students have you so far trained?

Answer: Every year it is compulsory for all 300-level students to go through entrepreneurial study every year. For you to graduate, you must pass what we call ESP 311. The ESP 311 has that practical component which is required of you to come here and be trained. Not just been trained, you produce what you have learnt for us to use in assessing you. That is 40 percent of the total score. So for you to pass that course, you must have passed through that. So every year, 300-level students are trained on one skill or the other, chosen from the 30 skills we have. I just got in touch with the ICT and the MIS to know the number of students who have registered for the 200-level course and these are the people who are going to take the 300-level course next year. From the ICT, we got 1,690 students, excluding the direct entry students who are with MIS which we are yet to get their data. So, you can see that not less than 1,800 students will be trained when we will be having the trainings next year. That is what we do, every student must be trained, including our PGD, MSc and PhD students. At that level they are engaged in what we call Social Entrepreneurship. There is a concept we call Social Entrepreneurship which inculcate in them the idea of trying to do something on your own and be in control. The idea of team work, working to bring out something that will be beneficial to the society. So this is what we do every year. For the postgraduate students, we have just finished training about 631 of them.

Question: Is there anything that we didn’t ask that you may want to talk about?

Answer: This one is just like an advert, if we set out for business we will need the support of the entire university community to be able to succeed. You need to help us blow our own trumpet so that the people outside will be aware of what we do. I want to appeal to every member of the University community that FULafia Centre for Entrepreneurial Development is open for business. You want to sew anything, both male and female, we have experts here that can help you get that done. You have an occasion, a birthday, wedding, you need a cake? We have experts here that can help you do that. You have an occasion and you need small chops? We can supply that. So all that we produce here, please, patronise us. You want to sew school uniform, lab coats? We can do that. And as we do that successfully, the money we’ll be making will help the system grow. President Buhari said, last week, during the convocation of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, that the government cannot finance the needs of the university. He said the university is supposed to think of ways to provide for its needs. We are beginning to think outside the box and for us to be successful, our own people must believe in us, first of all, and when you believe in us you will see that, yes, you will help us in propagating our course. Because when you wear something that is good and somebody asks you, who is your tailor? you will tell them that it is from Centre for Entrepreneurial Development and they will come in.

Thank you very much!