Imo State Governor, Senator Hope Uzodimma, has advocated urgent reforms in Nigerian universities of technology to enable them 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 their curricula to be in tandem with technological advancement in the world.
Uzodimma, who was the convocation lecturer at the 38th Convocation Lecture of the Federal University of Technology, Owerri (FUTO), stressed the need for the universities to move in tune with the Industrial Revolution.
His lecture was entitled: NIGERIAN UNIVERSITIES OF TECHNOLOGY MUST LEAD IN THE FOURTH INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION OR JEOPARDISE THE NATION’S FUTURE.
He 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.
Uzodimma, who is also the Chairman of the Progressive Governors Forum, also said that the universities integrated themselves 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 listed the following: ensuring 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, write code, file patents and raise capital alongside being taught to write theses.
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 embark upon holistic reforms to enable the universities of technology to meet up with the challenges of the 4th Industrial Revolution, there would be consequences for Nigeria.
He listed the four glaring consequences to include demographic challenges, with the population growing without relevant skills, economic marginalisation with the country being mere consumers, brain drain which will lead to depletion of professionals and the moral burden that would lead to regret.
But he was happy that the Federal Government under President Bola Ahmed Tinubu was doing a lot to support education in general and technological advancement in general.
He also disclosed that his government was pioneering digital skills and technology through the Imo Digital City Ltd while it was running four universities as a means of accelerating the acquisition of relevant skills for global competitiveness.
The Convocation Lecture was attended by scores of dignitaries, including the political class, academics, traditional rulers and the FUTO community.
