Victoria Mbangwa
The Federal Government has rolled out a series of transformative initiatives aimed at advancing food security, healthcare training, and youth entrepreneurship in Nigeria.
At the core of the strategy is the approval of N30 billion for mechanized farming in 30 agricultural universities, alongside a N17 billion allocation to 18 medical schools for producing healthcare professionals.
Speaking during a retreat with federal university pro-chancellors in Abuja, the Minister of Education, Dr. Tunji Alausa, emphasized the importance of aligning universities with their foundational mandates. He directed specialized universities to refocus on their core areas of expertise, phasing out unrelated programs.
He said, “We need to look critically into your curriculum, into the kind of courses that your universities are offering. We have federal universities of agriculture offering courses in accounting. That, we want you to move away from.
“Your University of Agriculture, focus on what you were set up to do. We have the Federal University of Technology offering courses in insurance. Your University of Technology, focus on that.
“We have several universities there. You are a faculty of agriculture, you don’t have a farm. What are you teaching? We will work with you, to encourage you to have your farm. Every university that has a faculty of agriculture, we now want you to set up your own mechanised farming and livestock production. And we have put aside about N30bn for that.
“We will give you N1bn. You will have to apply for N1bn to set up your mechanised farming in each of these universities. That will also help to contribute to food security in your country. This President, one of his first pillars in his priority area is food security. We want you as the people that build our future, the education system, build value of future and freedom and opportunities.
“We want you to start using your power, your position to create opportunities for attainment. We are also working with a tech fund. As I said, we’re focusing on STEM.
“We’ve identified about N17bn of the high impact with TETFund. Our special high impact projects to 18 universities. This will be directed, focused on a medical school to specifically train doctors, dentists, pharmacists, and nurses.
“Eighteen of the universities will share that N17bn. But we want you to focus on these four categories of courses for doctors, pharmacists, dentists, and nurses.”
To encourage youth innovation, Alausa announced plans for student startup grants aimed at fostering entrepreneurship.
He said, “We’ve identified one each university as a pilot in each geopolitical zone. We’re doing something what we call Renewed Campus Transportation. We’ll give 25 electric tricycles to those universities for them to use. The student will put it to the student union. They will operate it on a low payment platform.
“Probably N15 for each drop for each of the universities. That as well we’re working on. We also are going to roll out student startup innovation and entrepreneurial grants that we will give to students who are very innovative.
“We’ll give this grant to them to help them unleash the innate potential that they have in them. So our focus is to give the youth the support they need to be able to contribute to this country. We’re uniquely privileged today.”
