Use your talents to solve Africa’s problems, NASENI boss tasks graduands

The Executive Vice Chairman and Chief Executive of the National Agency for Science and Engineering Infrastructure (NASENI), Prof. Mohammad Sani Haruna yesterday, asked academics to use their talent and know-how to solve African problems.

Haruna, who made the submission while delivering a lecture for postgraduates in multidisciplinary sectors at the Ninth Convocation of the African University of Science and Technology (AUST) in Abuja, said many African nations need help to overcome their socio-economic challenges.

He said education is no longer about theories, but using skills to address problems, adding that since jobs are no longer waiting for graduates, they have to be creative.

According to him, if education is properly applied, Africa can be the best continent. He said: “I understand that the graduands are from Cameroun, South Sudan, Rwanda, Zimbabwe, Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana, Liberia and Nigeria.

“These eight countries like many other African nations need your talent, your ideas, your solutions, your innovative thinking, and your solution to hunger, starvation, poverty, diseases, self-inflicted wars, poor and deteriorating infrastructure, drug addiction, joblessness, security challenges, and import-oriented economy amongst others.

“It is how much of your talent, know-how and training that you can figure out and deploy to attend to these African problems. That is your value addition and not your degrees. It is your attitudes and not aptitude that will matter.

“Besides these socio-economic challenges, the continent of Africa has the most records of corruption, ethnicity, and religious intolerance.

“You are leaving to systems that have history and tendencies of discrimination, marginalisation and corruption as stated earlier, but you are our hope. Use your education to eradicate these and improve Africa to greatness to be the best continent.”

Haruna asked the graduands to wake up to the reality of the rising unemployment. He added: “AUST degrees are not about the theories or the education but what you are able to do that exemplifies the skills you have learnt in the classroom and the research, which takes education into utilities and practices.

“There are no jobs waiting for you in your countries anymore. You are graduating at the most difficult period of our history. The reality is your lives will not be a straight path. You will fail at one time of your life; you will lose, there is no doubt about it; but every failed experiment is a step forward.

“If you don’t fail, you are not even trying. To get something you never have, you have to do something you never did. Thomas Edison was said to have conducted over 1,000 failed experiments before succeeding in one trial to invent the Electric Bulb.
“A popular American proverb which is similar to one in my native language says: If you hang around a Barbershop, sooner or later you are going to get your hair cut….”