Nigerian universities are being urged to rethink their core mission, with a prominent business leader arguing that higher education must produce graduates who create jobs rather than graduates who simply search for them. The call came from Prof. Obiora Okonkwo, Chairman of United Nigeria Airlines, who used the platform of Veritas University’s 15th convocation ceremony in Abuja to challenge institutions to place entrepreneurship and practical skills development at the centre of academic life.
A Shift From Certificates to Capabilities
At the heart of Okonkwo’s message is a critique of an education system that, in his view, has become too focused on awarding qualifications. He argued that the true measure of educational quality should not be the number of graduates an institution produces, but the knowledge, skills, moral values and sense of responsibility those graduates carry into the world. Universities, he suggested, must move beyond the ceremonial handing out of certificates and begin equipping students with the mindset needed to become self-reliant and to contribute meaningfully to national development.
This is not a call to abandon academic rigour. Rather, it is an appeal to broaden what higher education delivers, ensuring that students leave with the practical capacity to apply what they have learned in real economic settings.
Entrepreneurship as a Core Subject, Not a By-Pass Discipline
Okonkwo’s most concrete recommendation concerns how entrepreneurship is taught. He advocated integrating entrepreneurship education into every academic department, including medicine, law, engineering and the sciences, rather than treating it as a peripheral or optional course. In his words, entrepreneurship should not be a “by-pass discipline” but a core subject made available to all students in every department.
He illustrated the practical value of this approach with examples drawn from professional training. A medical student who studies entrepreneurship, he noted, might one day choose to become a private practitioner and would benefit from understanding the business side of healthcare. Similarly, law students and researchers in the science departments could learn to think about the commercial and entrepreneurial dimensions of their work and research outcomes. The underlying principle is that entrepreneurial thinking is relevant across every field, not just to students of business.
Learning From Personal Experience
Okonkwo speaks on the subject with the authority of both theory and practice. A professor of entrepreneurship, he told the convocation gathering that he established his own business while still a student and has never been an employed person since graduating. He recounted earning first-class distinctions in his first and second degrees, yet choosing a path of enterprise rather than paid employment.
That experience, he said, has reinforced his conviction that entrepreneurial training should begin early in a student’s academic journey. Gaining an understanding of how the business world works while still in school, he argued, can shape a graduate’s entire trajectory. At the same time, he acknowledged that entrepreneurship is not necessarily the right career path for every graduate, and he expressed willingness to guide students who are interested in establishing their own businesses.
Bridging the Gap Between Classroom and Workplace
Beyond curriculum reform, Okonkwo called for stronger collaboration between universities and industry, particularly through internship programmes that give students practical exposure before graduation. He described internships as critical to bridging the gap between classroom learning and the demands of the workplace.
He pointed to his own company’s efforts as a model. United Nigeria Airlines has signed memoranda of understanding with Nnamdi Azikiwe University and Afe Babalola University to train mechanical engineering students in its aviation maintenance unit. According to Okonkwo, students in the programme are paid during their internship, receive certificates upon completion and are considered for automatic employment based on their performance. He reported that the initiative has produced impressive academic outcomes, with participating students graduating with at least second-class upper degrees.
The programme, he said, demonstrates the tangible benefits of industry-based training, and he urged universities to expand partnerships with private sector organisations to improve graduate employability.
Influence Beyond a Single Campus
The reach of Okonkwo’s advocacy appears to extend beyond the convocation stage. He disclosed that his lecture on entrepreneurship education at another university had been adopted as a policy document, with a committee established to study its recommendations and determine how they could be implemented across universities.
Why the Message Resonates
The call for universities to produce job creators comes amid longstanding concerns in Nigeria over graduate unemployment, skills mismatch and the limited capacity of the formal sector to absorb the growing number of young people entering the labour market. The country’s higher education system has traditionally been criticised for emphasising theoretical knowledge and academic qualifications over practical skills, innovation and enterprise development.
Those criticisms have fuelled persistent calls for universities to strengthen entrepreneurship education, technical training and industry-based learning so that graduates are prepared for the changing demands of the economy. Okonkwo’s intervention adds a prominent business voice to that chorus, framing the issue not merely as an employment problem but as a question of what education is ultimately for.
His argument ultimately returns to a simple proposition: that a university’s legacy should be measured by the capabilities and contributions of its graduates, and that those graduates should be equipped not only to enter the workforce but to expand it. For Nigerian universities, the challenge is clear, and the expectation, at least in Okonkwo’s view, is that they rise to meet it.
