 Great Ife, great Ife, my brother, my older brother, who attended this university, and I have always had very many arguments about which was the better university, my own alma mater, the University of Lagos, or Ife, or Baphemia Ola University today. This morning he called me and said to me that, well, you are going to Great Ife today. You better hail us, Great Ife. So I have hailed Great Ife, and the thing is that I do so proudly because this is indeed a great university, a great citadel of learning. I bring you the very warm felicitations of Mr. President to the graduates as well as to the university community on your 60th anniversary. As you know, I am at his direction, standing in today as visitor to the university. I also thank you for the kind invitation, a special guest of honor today. The caliber of the honorary graduates at today's ceremony speaks to the high standards of the Baphemia Ola University, speaks to the very high standards of the Baphemia Ola University. And may I congratulate Kaby Esi, the Oni of Ife, Ennito Boussi, or Gia Gia II, a man who has in a few short years redefined the exalted throne of the Oni by deliberately empowering the next generation and building bridges from the west to the east, from the north to the south, and serving our race with passion and zest. Also to Chief Michael Adiojo, I say congratulations, sir, for proving time and time again that you can do business honestly and fairly and still be wealthy and successful, and also by establishing a university and several other altruistic deeds, you have clearly demonstrated that the real value of wealth or status is in the service that is rendered by such means to others. Hurti, congratulations also to those being awarded the Doctor of Philosophy degrees today. Congratulations indeed. I must also pause to celebrate my colleagues in academia, the great scholars and fine academics who make up the faculties here at the OEU. You are the thought leaders at a historic moment where you have the great task of guiding the present and inspiring the future. The convocation lecture of my brother and friend, Arakmuri Oluwarutini, Akreidolu, Senior Advocate of Nigeria, and Supreme Commander of Amoteku, I always describe him a wealthy and successful lawyer and alumnus of this great university. He has given us much to ponder and reflect upon, and I salute you as always for such a thoughtful and insightful lecture, and to the real reason why we are here, the graduates, congratulations to you, and of course all the family, members and friends who are here to witness this great day. A diamond jubilee is certainly worth celebrating, and anyone who owns a diamond would take any opportunity to show off its strength and quality for this university, the Aba Femiah Oluwarutini University, and you'll permit me to refer to it occasionally as if it. There is much to show and many stories to tell. Stories of the institution itself and many of the incredible successes of its alumni. Stories of the triumphs of human endeavor, the primacy of ideas, the creative force of the introspective mind, and the power of vision. For example, that Ife has one of the most beautiful campuses in Africa was a product of vision, and the imagination of the legendary Professor Hezekiah Adidam Oluwarutini, his colleagues and collaborators of that era. And he's in an autobiography, Audacity on the Bound, written by Ambassador Oluwarutini, one of Nigeria's pioneer diplomats who studied at Harvard University around the same time as Professor Oluwarutini, and who later became a professorial fellow here at the OEU. He says, and I quote, the magnificent Aba Femiah Oluwarutini University was the toil and sweat of Hezekiah Oluwarutini, and I think it is fitting, and I think it is fitting indeed that the university library, the symbol of learning, is named after this great man. This university OEU is, and continues to be very much, a bastion of progressivism and innovation. And not surprisingly, you will find the phrase, a looter against all oppression, in the great Ife anthem. This progressivism is evident in the outlook of staff and students alike, including alumni who are governors, like my learned daughter. The great Ife Socialist School of Thought, the Ife Collector, with seminal thinkers like Shekmao Shobar, Shesandikwe Oluw, Toyo Oluwarutini, Ola Dupo Fasino, Shekmao Oluwai, Diji Daru, and others, were here, mutually reinforcing their counterparts at the Amadu Bello University. It was here at Ife that our Chief Aba Femiah Oluw for many years Chancellor of this university gave some of the most memorable and consequential lectures on the political economy of Nigeria and addressed some of his most crucial problems, including the imperatives of democracy, national economic development, the ideology of governance, and of course the famous National Sensors Figures. It was while still teaching here that Professor Oluwai Oluwai Nkau won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1986, but perhaps is less well known that he was also a lecturer at the University of Ife Ibadu Campus in the early 60s when he started his earliest commissions with state authorities. And it seems that Oluwai Nkau attracted a new tribe of literary insurgents into Ife. Insurgents because they represented a more aggressive politically and socially conscious literate than their forebears at Ibadu at the time. I'm talking of the likes of Biodu J4, Folio Motorshow, Yemio Gubii, and again Diji Daru. Yemio Gubii and Biodu J4 and a few more left if they had joined Alexigru and Stanley Makibu and Lade Bonoala to radically and permanently change the face of print journalism in Nigeria with the establishment of the Guardian newspapers. But that was a generation of men who are now 70 years old and over. Now several generations later, sitting in his hotel, his postal room here at the OE, Sheung Oshewa, then an undergraduate developed a revolutionary journalism idea, this time technology-based, Naira Land, now possibly Africa's largest internet forum. Naira Land has 2.5 million registered users, almost 10 times more readers than all Nigerian print newspapers put together. But talking about founding businesses in hostels, I'm sure we all know now the multi-million dollar job website, Joberman. It was founded also here at the OEU in 2009 by Ola Lekmoy Lude Ayode Jadyo Umi and Okwemi Aweyemi. At the time, students of this university, it was here at IFE also. In this place of deep culture, that the Orioloku Acting Company was founded by Professor Ola Rotimi from where the award-winning dramatic tragedies, Hurumi, and the thoughts are not to blame, came. And from here also, held more recently, and from here also came more recently, the eloquent historical excursions of Professor Tui Falola, who is currently at the University of Texas at Austin in the U.S. These pioneers and greats inspired a generation of artists that established Nigeria's primacy in the creative arts. Young artists trained at OEU are continuing in this strong literary tradition. Lagbaja, the iconic masked musician, is also an IFE alumnus whose father was faculty here. Damia Jair, who studied medicine here, but went on to co-found Saraba Magazine. Emmanuel Faith, an up-and-coming poet, who is helping to promote reading culture through bookathon, where members read at least five books per month. But the stories of IFE go beyond its history. IFE has always proved to be a place of cutting-edge innovation and even more so a place for the incubation of tomorrow's solutions. In 1974, at a convocation ceremony held here at IFE, Tui Falola captured the centrality of man in the advancement of our world. When IFE was to be said, and I quote, man is the sole dynamic in nature and accordingly every individual in Nigeria constitutes the supreme economic potential which this country possesses. So we must be proud of the far-sightedness of the faculties and management of this great citadel of learning. OEU was very much ahead of its time when it named its medical faculty the Faculty of Health Sciences and its engineering faculty the Faculty of Technology. The Faculty of Health Sciences at IFE was unique from the emphasis that it laid on community medicine and the attainment of a BSc in health sciences before proceeding to study for the medical degree of MBCHP. So not surprisingly, the university has produced top-notch researchers in several areas of medicine, but in particular in public health. I had the pleasure of meeting with Professors Agisiria Guy and Thelma Bavarola, both IFE alumni, when they undertook groundbreaking research and clinical trials into the potential use of Ivor McTeen as a prophylaxis and a cure for COVID-19. Professor Louis Inca Olutoev, another alumnus of the Faculty of Health Sciences, attained global recognition when he led a team of surgeons to successfully take a 23-week old baby out of her mother's womb, removed the tumour from the baby and returned it to the mother's womb where the injuries from her operation healed and she continued to grow until she was born the second time at 36 weeks. The Faculty of Technology was one of the first to include electronics in its electrical engineering programme and so not surprisingly, the early leaders in technology and tech-enabled businesses were alumni of OE's Department of Electronics and Electrical Engineering and of course you would mention the lives of Shegun Ogusoy, CEO of Airtel Africa, of course is an IFE alumnus, Halturi Ola, CEO of MTA Nigeria and another great IFE alumnus and product of this same department, Professor Kintayo Akiwande, who teaches today at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and is one of the world's most respected professors of electrical engineering and computer science. And only last week, another alumnus of the Electronics and Electrical Engineering Department of this university, Ms. Funker O'Quaker, made global investment news when Equinix, the global conglomerate announced that it was acquiring Main One, the company that Funker founded, for $320 million. Main One is West Africa's first privately owned open access undersea high capacity cable. It is 7,000 kilometre cable stretching from Portugal to West Africa with landings in Accra, in Dhaka, in Abidjan, in Lagos. And I'm sure that the Department of Agricultural Economics must be wondering how I forgot to mention the two most celebrated alumnus, Dr. Akiwande Deshina, president of the Africa Development Bank and winner of the World Food Prize and Dr. O.K. Orama, president of Africa Exim Bank, who, of course as you know, obtained his MSc and PhD here at OAU. So to the graduates today, you have some of the highest shoulders and the broadest shoulders to stand on. But it is this generation that must deal with the biggest issues that confront the world and confront our nation. It is the big and innovative ideas that will solve these problems. You will have to confront the problems of climate change and a world moving away from fossil fuels. And you will usher in the age of renewable energy and green solutions. You will deal with the issues of feeding, educating, providing health care and jobs for the fourth largest population in the world in a few years to come. We will need smarter, aggregate solutions to feed these huge numbers. Technology is already helping to crowd fund agriculture and help more prolific seedlings. Education needs hundreds of new solutions. We will not learn and teach in the old ways in another few years. And we have to design ways of teaching millions, even outside the classrooms. And there are many young men and women already doing great things, using technology to reach children in far-flung areas of our country. You will confront the need to vastly improve our public and clinical health care. We must build on the work of the Genomic Centre at EDE and the local vaccine production efforts going on and make local drugs, make drugs locally for hundreds of millions of Nigerians. The insecurity problems that we are experiencing, the rise of terrorism in several parts of the country, this very large country and the access to lethal weaponry by non-state actors tell us that we must be smarter in policing the country, using smart drones and surveillance equipment. The politicization, if I may, of the importation of ammunition tells us that we must manufacture our own arms. Already, Pro Force, a Nigerian company led by Ola Woundey, is manufacturing APCs and more personnel carriers and MRAPs in their factory in Uderemo, and they are exporting already to several African countries. So are Imperial, a company based in Paduna, and the government own Daikon, producing different types of ammunition. The future is smart weapons benefiting from AI and machine learning. Yes, the challenges are huge, but I believe that you are well equipped to resolve them. And the evidence is here already. Since 2016, despite two recessions, young Nigerians have built six unicorns. A unicorn is a company that is valued at over a billion dollars, and there are already six established in this country since 2016. It was our who said, right here in IFAE again, that it is effective economic planning and even more effective implementation that would enable us to avoid a disaster and reap phenomenal progress instead. And so our third national development plan 2021 to 2025 is an attempt to chart a path for the future. The future belongs far more to you, graduands, so you need to pay attention to it. One of the crafters of the plan, Ambassador Yermy Diquielu is here with me, a special advisor to the president of the economy. He is also an alumnus of IFAE who only lived in this campus all his life. His father, Mr. Asha Sondiquielu of Blessed Memory, was IFAE's first African Liberia. The strategic objectives of the national development plan include establishing a strong foundation for a diversified economy, investing in critical infrastructure, in particular power and broadband, enabling human capital development, teaching STEM, and improving governance and strengthening security. And its implementation is expected to be supported by a range of measures of fiscal, monetary and trade measures. The plan emphasizes the creation of an average of five million jobs per annum during the period. In addition to job openings, it's also essential for Nigerian youth to acquire the skills and knowledge of the workplace. This is why we're working with the United Nations Development Program and the European Union and other partners on the Jubilees Fellows Program, which is a one-year work placement scheme for 20,000 young Nigerians annually over the next five years. This will be a paid work placement scheme to sharpen the skills of those who are coming out of school beginning from the first quarter of next year. The national development plan focuses on value addition across all sectors, including agriculture, manufacturing, solid minerals, digital services, tourism, hospitality, sports and entertainment. In agriculture, for example, equal attention is being given to primary production, as well as other aspects of the value chain, such as transportation, storage, processing, marketing and exports. In a similar context, the plan places great emphasis on the export of goods and services, especially leveraging on the African continental free trade agreement. There are several, several different aspects of the plan, and I hope you'll get an opportunity to relive on the summary of it. So let me again congratulate the honorees and the graduands, and I pray that you individually will do much better than all your producer cells that we have mentioned here today. And to the University at 60. And to the University at 60. I pray that the next 60 years will be more fruitful and more fulfilling and make this an even greater university. God bless your family and all of the University. God bless the Federal Republic of Nigeria.