Your degree not a meal ticket, be creative, Sanwo-Olu tells youths

Lagos State Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu has urged youths in the country “to come to terms with the reality of the time we are in.”

The governor, who spoke at the 11th convocation ceremony of Bell’s University of Technology, Ota, at the weekend, represented by Mrs. Sekola Ibikunle Taiwo, said that the youths must know that their university degree is “no more a meal ticket, but rather a ticket to unlock or open doors on self-creativity, new ideas, and inventions that will make Nigeria greater.”

Sanwo-Olu said: “We urge the youths in this country to come to terms with the reality of our time that university degree is no longer a meal ticket, but a ticket to unlock or open doors on self- creativity, new ideas and inventions that will make our nation greater.

“Our nation is already a great nation, but we need the youths not to throw their degrees away and not join the bad ones that “take making-money as the best thing to happen to them.”

He said that the youths must rather take nation-building as the best thing to happen to them for the nation to be greater.

However, the institution’s Chancellor, Ahmed Joda, in his address, urged the Federal Government to see private universities in the country as private investors in tertiary education and be accorded the desired recognition and support.

He said that if the government could agree that the best in education pays the best interest, then “private investors in the tertiary education in Nigeria should be celebrated and accorded the desired recognition and support.”

Meanwhile, five months and five days after Sanwo-Olu signed into law the 2019 budget, he will on Friday present 2020 budget estimates to the Lagos State House of Assembly.

The 2019 budget though was presented by the immediate past Governor Akinwunmi Ambode, it was signed into law on June 3 by Sanwo-Olu. This was because the budget was a tool of controversy for about six months between the state House of Assembly and Ambode.

Ambode was said to have sent the budget to the Assembly on December 24, 2018, with a note that he was ready to present it on December 28. But the presentation did not hold as the lawmakers were on recess aside that they later claimed that the budget was not seen.

Ambode finally presented the budget on February 5, 2019, after a back and forth between the executive and the legislature on the whereabouts of the appropriation bill.

The budget was not passed until April 29, about a month to when Ambode was to leave the office.