The University of Lagos is making a deliberate shift in how it thinks about the purpose of a University degree, moving beyond the traditional model of academic certification towards one that measures success by whether graduates can create opportunities rather than simply compete for them.
The shift was on display at an Entrepreneurship Development and Innovation Primer Programme held at the Ade Ajayi Main Auditorium on the UNILAG campus, where the Vice Chancellor, Prof. Folasade Ogunsola, laid out the institution's thinking on what Nigerian graduates should look like when they leave university.
"We want to provide Nigeria with people who can shape our future, with people who can find solutions to our problems and people who can help us become the developed nation that we are looking for. We are on the way out, but we must support those who are coming behind us," she said.
Prof. Ogunsola explained that the University's entrepreneurship programme was not designed to teach vocational skills in isolation but to first shift the way students think about their own potential. Practical business training, soft skills development, and the formation of problem solving teams would follow in subsequent stages. The University has also established partnerships with industries and innovation hubs to provide students with internship opportunities that earn academic credit and build professional connections.
She also used the occasion to push back against a tendency she said was holding Nigeria back, the habit of waiting for the government to solve problems that citizens are capable of addressing themselves. "What I hear every time is that the government is not doing it. Why should the government do it? What are you doing in your space to make it better? We want people who are accountable and who recognise that the solution to Nigeria is not the government but every one of us," she said.
Director of the Entrepreneurship and Skills Development Centre at UNILAG, Abayomi Adebisi, framed the programme's ambition in concrete terms. He argued that if thousands of students could establish functioning businesses before graduating, the impact on national unemployment would be significant. "You can imagine if you can get 5,000 of them to create the businesses they will run before leaving the University of Lagos. You have already solved the crisis of unemployment. Every student of the University of Lagos should acquire the knowledge and ability to start an enterprise before graduating," he said.
UK based property acquisition agent Yemi Edun, who also addressed the programme, described the initiative as one whose full value would only become clear with time. "This is a platform that in 10 years' time people will ask, 'Why didn't anyone think of this before?'" he said.
For a country where graduate unemployment remains a persistent challenge, the argument being made at UNILAG is straightforward: the solution may lie less in creating more jobs and more in producing more graduates who know how to create them.
