 I am greatly indebted to the council and management of this great centre of learning and research for the opportunity to give this lecture as part of the fifth convocation ceremonies of the university. My special gratitude to Professor Fatima Batu-Mukta, the dynamic vice chancellor of this university. Not only for the invitation, but also for the warm hospitality accorded to me and my entourage since our arrival here today. Every citadel of learning derives its claims to greatness from the reputation and accomplishments of its students and staff. The great academics and scholars to whom has been given the enormous task of instructing, of guiding and inspiring the minds and talents that are destined to define the future. Your task as academics and scholars is possibly the noblest that anyone could ask for, yet it is often without reward or even gratitude. But we thank you today for your great and priceless service to this and to coming generations. It is most pleasing to learn that the proverbial seed that was planted less than a decade ago, the Federal University Dutsey, has not only produced already four sets of graduates and tomorrow by the grace of God a fifth set, but also has grown so boundlessly to have now over 7,000 students spread across six faculties including a College of Medicine and Health Sciences. Yours is the first among the set of universities set up by the federal government in 2011 to establish a College of Medicine and Health Sciences. Congratulations. Equally remarkable are the reports of the great exploits being recorded by the university in many fields that amply validate the promise of the fruitful synergy of town and gown. Let me cite just two examples. In recognition of your relevant and innovative research efforts, the Federal Ministry of Agriculture selected your university to host the Agri-Business Incubation Centers. The second has been your response to the security challenges besetting our nation today. You elected to express a shared commitment to the national search for the solution by being the first amongst your peers to mount a program on criminology and security studies, thereby demonstrating your relevance and proving that the university should not only be an incubator of ideas, but also a solution provider. Congratulations on these sterling achievements. And to the students of the university and especially the graduating class of 2019, let me just say congratulations and well done. The future is certainly very bright indeed. Madam Vice Chancellor, my lecture titled Facing the New Decade, a topic which you graciously allowed me to choose, is really directed at the young men and women who are in this arena today. I count myself as one of those young men and women, and I hope that those of us who are here also see ourselves as young men and women. But the reasons why I think this is addressed to the young people here is first, that the young men and women, students of this university are the future of our country. Secondly, that future has already arrived at our doorsteps, perhaps much faster than we expected. So for the next few minutes you will permit me to take you on a brief journey into this imminent future, how it will affect us all and my humble suggestions about what we may need to do to make the best of it. Let me begin by making a few general statements and perhaps some predictions. First is that the next few decades will present tremendous opportunities for getting well-paying jobs and lucrative entrepreneurship opportunities all over the world. Anyone will be able to access many of those jobs and those opportunities without even having to move from your own country, in some cases without even leaving your home. There will be a true international marketplace of ideas, talents and opportunities. But to access that marketplace you need to become in many senses a global citizen and a lot of that will be by your own effort. Self-education, self-education, self-development will be important. The second is technology, and its various iterations and applications will be crucial in all and every aspect of human existence. The greater our access to technology, our adaptation and application of it to the ideas that we have, the more successful we are likely to be. The third is that we are today. The third is that we are today in the most advanced moment in human history and on a daily basis knowledge and its application grows in lips and bounds. For the first time in human history anyone of us can be heard or seen all over the world by live streaming without owning our own satellite TV station. We can share ideas with millions of people in seconds on Facebook or on Instagram. It was Arthur Clark, the British science fiction writer who said that any sufficiently advanced technology is not different anymore from magic. If you follow some of the trends today in technology over the past years in particular, much of that statement is true. As the coming years look set to be one of the most spectacular magic shows ever. Last year DeepMind, which is a learning outfit, announced that one of its healthcare algorithms could detect over 50 eye diseases as accurately as a trained doctor. Only recently we witnessed the trial run of an artificial intelligence news reader on the Chinese Sinua news station and the unveiling of a digital assistant that can mimic the voice of human beings with uncanny likeness. It is called the Google Duplex. There are provinces in China that are now trying out artificial intelligence teachers in remote villages where graduates and young people are not likely to stay. In 2018 there was a world first, the first in the history of mankind, an artificial intelligence system engaged in a two way debate with a human opponent. The fourth and perhaps the most important point that I wish to make to you is that the abundance of natural resources such as we have in Nigeria, oil and several minerals, even talent mean little if nothing or nothing unless we are able to creatively and by using innovation and adding value add to whatever it is that we have in terms of talent or resources. Let me put it differently. The difference between poverty and wealth or mediocrity and high achievement is creativity or the capacity and willingness to add value. This is the reason why the manufacturers of Apple, the Apple iPad or the Apple iPhone make more money in four months than Nigeria earns from oil in one year. Apple sells the product of the ingenuity of the human mind, ideas translated to products, services and solutions that millions of people are prepared to pay for. And because the capacity of the human mind for creativity and generation of ideas and for innovation and invention is limitless, the source of wealth of innovation companies and individuals is also limitless. On the other hand, oil drilling and selling and other extractive activities without adding value by refining and developing a whole petrochemical ecosystem cannot yield optimal profit or create the jobs and wealth. Similarly, the mere fact that you have large tracts of arable land for agriculture does not mean that you will succeed in agriculture or become wealthy or even as a nation be able to feed ourselves. Anybody can plant a seed and expect a harvest. But the reason why most farmers are subsistence farmers and why they remain relatively poor is because they add no value to what they produce by processing or packaging or making other products out of the raw harvest. And also because many times they do not have access to the cutting edge innovations and inventions in farm inputs and farming techniques, those who can add value to the farmers harvest become wealthier than the farmer. So the growers of the raw materials are the weakest in the value chain and the poorest. For example, the man who makes chocolates from cocoa is bound to be richer than the cocoa farmer. He has added value to the raw cocoa by processing in some cases by designing and packing the chocolates in appealing wrappers by adding value. You create more jobs and more wealth. So while we will always need the traditional professionals, we will always need doctors, lawyers, accountants and bankers, but those adding value to their services will make more money than they can. So those developing artificial intelligence for giving legal advice or medical diagnosis or accounting or banking will be more successful than the professionals themselves. So the future of banking and financial services doesn't even necessarily belong to the banks or bankers as we know them today. It may well belong to the fintechs, the financial technology companies and other technology-enabled solutions. So for example, today we have Kia Kia, the name of a company that uses artificial intelligence and algorithms to process loan requests in minutes and can grant credit without the hassles of regular banks. Or Kuda Bank, another Nigerian example set up by very young people, is a bank without a single physical branch. It's called itself a bank. It's a payment system with all these features built into a mobile application. There's also Eyowo, another example of a payment services company which is designed for identifying, for enumerating and paying to and collecting repayments from the over 2.2 million trader money and market money beneficiaries. They have completely revolutionized financial inclusion, making and receiving payments from the farthest parts of Nigeria. There's also another company called Paystack, also set up by young Nigerians, many of them under the age of 30, and they have developed applications that makes it easier to make payments across the world. There's also Invest Bamboo, another Nigerian company, started by two 26-year-old Nigerians. They offer new ways for you to save money and to invest in stocks just from a single application. Others have developed technologies that make it possible for us to invest in farms without even ever seeing the farm. Two Nigerian companies, again, set up by young Nigerians under the age of 35, thrive at Greek and farm-crowding. These are great examples of service providers that help small-scale farmers to scale up and to access valuable training, all of this done through crowdfunding. In the world of medicine and healthcare, there is a life bank owned by a young Nigerian lady. This is a health technology startup. We use these drones today, drone technology, to facilitate the delivery of blood to various health centers. Or we could take another, called 54G. This is a firm that is harnessing genomic data from African DNA to revolutionize the drug industry, changing the future of medicine. Even in the usually conservative legal profession, to which I and the chairman belong, entrepreneurs are disrupting the old trends. There is a digital legal research company called Law Pavilion. The company's digital tools help to do legal research quickly and efficiently. They even answer legal questions. So it's possible by putting a legal question to this artificial intelligence setup to get some answers to your questions. Judges and lawyers subscribe to it and they use it. It's a very lucrative value addition to legal practice. Yet the founder and CEO of the company is not even a lawyer. So today there are opportunities for entrepreneurs to build their businesses around traditional professions without being professionals themselves. The most widely read online publications are neither owned nor run by trained journalists. Some of us are familiar with the news aggregation platform called Naira Land. It was started by two young men who were students of the Obafemiahou Law University while they were still in school. Today is one of the most successful social media platforms that we have. Even in many of the most successful advertising companies or PR companies, many of those who founded them have no training in these disciplines. Most are self taught. My nephew who is a lawyer is establishing an organic farm and a poultry after taking lessons online. His only knowledge was derived from taking a few classes by somebody from Kano State who was offering training for people who wanted to go into poultry online. But let me also direct our minds, especially the minds of those of us who are here, the young men and women who are here, to the new opportunities that are being created every day. Data science is one big area. Currently, whenever you use the internet, you leave vast amounts of your personal data online. And in the near future, companies will need data scientists to go through all of these information and to generate answers to business questions and to make recommendations based on their findings. Many businesses already spend a lot of time and money going through people's data so that they can sell them products. This is a new area of opportunities for jobs. Another big area is content production, 3D and 2D animation, virtual effects and special effects, as well as augmented reality and virtual reality. The use of animation in education, in entertainment and media is growing in lips and bounds. Those who can create content with animation are being and will be much sought after, especially in the years to come. According to a recent survey by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, multimedia artists and animators are among the highest paid within the US workforce. This has translated to more jobs for animators in emerging economies such as India, Vietnam and now Nigeria. The average pay of a 3D animator in Nigeria, who has just started an entry level, is between 300,000 and 500,000 monthly, Naira. Now, what has happened also is that in our training of empire beneficiaries, we set aside a fair amount of money to train animators. We have carried out two sets of training, one in the north and one in the south of Nigeria. In total, we have trained over 25,000 young men and women in animation. Also remember that content is becoming more in demand with the streaming wars that are taking place now, with Netflix, with Disney, and only recently, Airtel, our phone provider, has launched its own streaming service in Nigeria. Then we have the whole range of cybersecurity, another big area of opportunity. Today, there are new opportunities for cybersecurity specialists. How is that? With each technological advance comes the addition of more security risks just to store the information and to keep the information secure. Therefore, cybersecurity will continue to be a growing sector. In this sense, each country will have its own specific regulations just as we have and many other international regulations. We will ensure that professionals with an advanced technological background capable of nullifying new threats that are posed to both technology and people will be in demand all the time. How about 3D printing? 3D printing is also becoming an area of great need and it will become even more relevant and fundamental in the future, especially when you compare it with artificial intelligence and robotics. Experts in 3D printing must possess creative skills with ability to improve profitability and the applicability of models. And also, they must have some computer skills and the knowledge of 3D printing tools. The federal government recently again established about two years ago now, we established a humanitarian hub in Adama state. In that hub, young Nigerians are trained to use 3D printers to make artificial limbs. And today they've been making several artificial limbs for people who have lost their limbs, especially those who lost their limbs in the conflicts in the Northeast. And this is a growth area. And I'm sure that it will continue to grow because 3D printing can be applied in so many different ways and for so many different purposes. Experts are required in 3D printing and it doesn't take a year to even learn to use 3D printers. Madam Vice Chancellor, the technical revolution from the last few decades has considerably changed the business and cultural world. Currently we live in an application economy as a result of the amount of technology and mobility that surrounds us with all of our smartphone applications that we depend on for everything from mobile banking to even health monitoring these days. As such, it's difficult to find a reason why one should not try to find something that is related to technology to do, especially when we consider that it's already present in practically everything we do from our professions in our companies to our personal lives as consumers. This means that computer programming in one shape or form or the other will continue to be an important skill for those who are seeking to gain viable employment, the kind of employment that will provide opportunities and a decent pay. So today the most successful businesses are those that are able to add value. Even our culture can become a great wealth creator, but only if we add value. So just doing traditional dances is not enough. To put together 8 or 16 young men and women dancing before guests when they come, foreign or local guests cannot make money. Organizing dance dramas on the other hand can make money. When a whole outfit is created, when a whole drama outfit is created with our culture and our songs, where we're able to employ scriptwriters, a composer, an arranger, a director, then it is possible to begin to make money even from our cultural dances. But the most important thing is that we must add value. In our future, there is truly something for everyone. We should take all advantage of digital technology, especially social media and the various platforms on offer to grow a customer base, to gain traction and advance businesses. Anybody can write a blog, anybody can develop a website to sell products or even your ideas. Whatever it is you know how to do, people are running full-fledged commercial businesses on Instagram without a single physical shop, an opportunity that's only made possible by the internet. We are an entrepreneurial people, a society of multitaskers who now, thanks to the virtual economy, can make real opportunity out of anything that we are passionate about. The question for many of our young people today is what is your passion? How can you take the skills that you have and add value to the world around you? Our future, the future is going to depend a great deal on what we do with our passions and how we can sell what it is that we are passionate about to millions of people all over the world. I've seen videos on tutorials on how to make good soup, just making good soup alone or baking the best cakes. And all of these videos get hundreds of thousands of views on Instagram or YouTube, people advertising on them. Recently, I'm sure many of us might have, or some of us might have come across the YouTuber called Dima Ume and he's using, just showing people how to use makeup, how to master the highlights and the contour. That's all that is teaching people and she says that she's already made her first million just from YouTube, just teaching people how to use makeup. I've also seen some YouTube videos of people teaching young women how to keep their husbands. I don't know how many people have seen those videos, what to do to keep your husband. Very interesting videos, I must tell you. I've watched some of them and I'm very careful now because I hope my wife has not been looking at them too closely. Thanks to the social media, whatever ideas and skills that you have can be leveraged for benefit. Your knowledge is of immense importance and you have to find creative ways of taking advantage of it. While it is easier than ever to sell your knowledge and skills, it's also becoming easier and cheaper for you to acquire skills. For example, there's something called the mobile prof. This is an application which you can actually get on your smartphone, even sometimes just using your SSD. It's an application for teaching people how to code, how to actually write codes, just using your mobile phone. You don't even need a laptop anymore. The future is about self-education, it's about self-development. It's important for everyone of us to invest in the incredible opportunities that are already available for online education. Years ago, it was impossible to do a specialized course in a leading international university without first gaining admission, paying a lot of money and then traveling abroad. Today, you can sit in the comfort of your own home and get a sound education. Universities such as Harvard and Dartmouth College and several others are offering full-time online courses. For example, some of them are offering online courses, those two are offering online courses on data sites, online or programming through a learning platform that is called EDX. This means that you can learn a whole new programming language in a year for less than it would have cost you to even get on a flight to go to America. There are several new means of self-education and they are more accessible than anyone might have thought only a few years ago. There's no question at all that an exciting future lies ahead of us. There are breakthroughs in radical technologies capable of disrupting whole industries and perhaps even our very conception of work itself. So for higher institutions who are getting graduates ready for the world of work, for the graduates are new graduates and the new graduates and the near graduates who are here today, what does the disruption of the workforce by emerging technologies signify for livelihoods and employment? Today there are several important implications related to the fields of artificial intelligence and emerging technologies that will change radically the way we work and will radically change our economies. So we have seen for example that much of what is considered analytical work by lawyers, by investment bankers, accountants and the age-old professionals will be performed better by machines in a fraction of the time that human beings can. So legal advice especially of the routine kind will be given now by machines and it's already been given by artificial intelligence. I've given you one example of a Nigeria and several new applications have been developed every day. So there is a need to train our professionals differently with these new opportunities and challenges in mind. With the advent of the fourth industrial revolution, the so-called Internet of Things, the world of work, the way we work is constantly changing and is driven by the inexorable forces that have an impact not only on professional services but on manufacturing and trade, on global supply chains and the digitalization of the global economy to name just a few. So for example, the supervision work that managers do is changing rapidly and there may soon be no need for it for supervisors in the workplace. A young lady who owns a clothing store in Abuja and Lagos but lives in Abuja was showing me on her laptop how she can remotely see all that is going on in her shop in Lagos real-time minute by minute, second by second. So she can actually speak to her employees from her laptop real-time, her employees in Lagos while she's in Abuja seeing everything that is going on in her shop. That's now readily available technology. In other words, she can supervise her store herself from anywhere in the world. So the type of manager that you will now need going forward will be a different time. Supervisors will become irrelevant. Education today must therefore be education for employability. The sort of education that makes us employable and that makes us relevant in the technologies and in the opportunities that are presenting itself today. So our curricula, the university curricula, curricula of tertiary education must be versatile. It must be dynamic. The focus must be on innovation, on critical thinking, on interdisciplinary thinking, on design thinking, on synergizing and collaboration with others across the world to solve problems. The era of cramming the teacher's notes and just reproducing those notes for high grades is over. The graduate of the future is a problem solver. The graduates I work pushing out today are problem solvers, thinkers, entrepreneurs. Our educators and policymakers, schools and universities must adapt their curricula, their policies and projects to improve the skills that enable the graduate to nimbly and constantly respond to the ever-changing face of the economy and the workplace. A student of humanities today equipped with the best skills or with the right skills and mindset will be part of the collaboration to build an application that will define an aspect of our business. In other words, a student of history, a student of English, a student of languages without any previous scientific training or knowledge can, with the right skills that have been taught today, which even just self-teaching can develop applications that will change the business, that will change business and industry and earn a lot of money because applications are developed by collaboration. So they are those who are scientists, they are those who come from a point of view of imagination, they are those who come from a point of view of design, all of them collaborating. Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple, was more of an artist than a computer scientist and yet he developed some of the most incredible applications that we've ever seen and made the kind of profit that makes everybody wonder whether they are not in the wrong profession. A man or woman of ideas, no matter your degree, can become in collaboration with others, the designers or owners of the next application that will make billions and create jobs for millions. This is the exciting future that is ahead of us, the opportunities are limitless. I want to urge all of us, especially the young people who are here, to note that we are in the best times in the history of mankind. Let nobody tell you about the good old days. I've said before and I'm quoting someone, I'm not so sure who it is, who said that those who keep reminding us of the good old days are probably suffering from memory loss. We must not allow them to keep talking about the good old days. We are in the best times possible today. These are the best times that are possible. And the reason why these are the best times is because we are in the most technologically advanced moment in human history. This is the most technologically advanced moment. This is the most advanced moment in the history of mankind. We have never been as advanced as we are today. It was Fareed Zakaria, the CNN journalist who said, and I'm quoting him, that the smartphones, the phones that we have today, have more computing power than all of the computing power that took men to the moon on the spacecraft, that first spacecraft that took men to the moon. All the computing power that was in that spacecraft, we now have 100 times that computing power in the smartphones, the phones that we are carrying around today. So we are living in a time of sheer magic and we must take advantage, and we must take every advantage of it. And I know that the young people here, especially those of the Federal University of Dutsey, are raring to go. The future is certainly bright. Thank you very much.