Imo State Governor, Hope Uzodimma, has advocated urgent reforms in Nigerian universities of technology to enable them to meet the challenges of the 4th industrial revolution.
 
He said that for Nigeria to be part of the beneficiaries of the 4th revolution, the universities must reorganise its curricula to be in tandem with technological advancement in the world.
 
Uzodimma, who was the Convocation lecturer at the 38th convocation of the Federal University of Technology, Owerri (FUTO), stressed the need for universities to move in step with the industrial revolution.
 
Delivering the lecture entitled: ‘Nigerian Universities of Technology Must Lead In The Fourth Industrial Revolution or Jeopardise the Nation’s Future’, Uzodimma noted that universities in America, South Korea, India, Israel, and elsewhere were able to drive industrial revolutions in their countries based on research, institutional reforms, and specific national technological mandates.
 
The Imo State Governor, who is also the Chairman of the Progressive Governors Forum, said that universities must integrate structurally with industry, government, and international research networks.
 
“The universities of technology that successfully drive national transformation are structured around five operating principles, including the update of curriculum to reflect the frontier of what they teach.”
 
He also noted that the universities of technology must ensure that faculties include practitioners drawn from industry and career academics, a research agenda shaped by problems with commercial application alongside problems of purely academic interest, while ensuring that students are taught to build firms.

He said the fifth and final one is that the institutions concerned should operate in structural partnerships with the government and with industry so that the boundary between the economy and the campus is porous in both directions.
 
Uzodimma advocated that FUTO and other universities of technology should strive to adopt those principles and translate them into specific changes in curriculum, staffing, research, and governance.

The governor warned that if urgent steps are not taken to implement holistic reforms that enable universities of technology to meet the challenges of the 4th industrial revolution, there would be consequences for Nigeria.
 
He listed four glaring consequences: demographic growth without relevant skills; economic marginalisation, with the country being merely a consumer; brain drain, which will lead to the depletion of professionals; and the moral burden that will lead to regret.