Professor Gbemisola Oke is the Director, Centre for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, University of Ibadan. As regards series of event piling up towards the maiden edition of The Nigerian Campus Enterprise Challenge, holding fast at the University of Ibadan this month (September), we deemed it fit to hear from her.
What purpose does the Centre for
Entrepreneurship and Innovation serve?
The centre
for entrepreneurship and innovation of the University of Ibadan is that
coordinating body that enables students and staff entrepreneurial trainings and
it cuts across the entire university.We are not limited to any Faculty or
discipline, we take everybody within the university, we encourage and nurture entrepreneurs
in this centre through training, courses and we are actually in the process of
developing masters and PHD degree courses in Entrepreneurship.
How long has this centre been in
existence?
The centre
was established in 2002 though as a committee christened The Committee for
University Private Sector Collaboration. The University realized that a University
should not stand alone, they should occupy their positions as being able to
influence the society positively, and if you look at a part of the mission
statement of the University of Ibadan, it says ‘to be that body which enables
and impacts positively, the society. That is what this centre is assisting the
university to do.
Considering your background in medicine,
how were you able to translate that into entrepreneurship and how have been
able to take thiscentre to where it is presently?
I
think the fact that somebody from the medical background would assume this
position says a lot about what entrepreneurship is all about. Entrepreneurship
is not discipline based, it’s an attitude, it is a way of doing things a better
way. I have not found being the director of this place a challenge; it is just
being like a second nature.
What can you say have been the
challenges of the centre in the past two years?
I
would say awareness is not as good as it ought to be. You said that many students
are still not aware that thiscentre exists and for those who know a bit about
the centre, they still don’t have a deep understanding of what we do and the
extent at which we can carry them in becoming better and self-reliant.
How have you been able to tackle these
challenges?
Well,
we are still not there but we have increased our outreach and visibility in
many ways, particularly encouraging the youth to take ownership of some of the
programs like what Inceptum is doing as Part of our strategy. Otherwise, if it
doesn’t fit into our strategy, we would not have encouraged it.
So far, what are the achievements of CEI
and what are the plans for the immediate future?
I
would say we are taking giant steps. Like I said we started from just a
committee, a committee that was trying to sensitize the community, but from
that point on we started from being able to float the ETR 301, a course
available as an elective to every student, and it ends with a business plan which
the university is determined and committed to funding.
We
are also in the process of having higher degrees in entrepreneurship. Apart
from that, and more significantly, is the impact that we have on our students
in transforming them from mere students who think they qualify as graduates and
are looking for employment to students who are actually competent for the real
world. Right now, many of our students feel comfortable and confident to come
in here and discuss their business ideas and we encourage them. We now also run
courses that support businesses, we have business support services which we
make open to our students as well as staff, we run free retirement programs,
trainings to enable our staffs that are planning to retire to be better
equipped to face retirement.
What kind of help does the centre render
to student entrepreneurs?Is it in form of advisory, financial or in terms of
putting them through the rudiment of what they are trying to do? Is the centre
looking at running a first degree in entrepreneurship?
The
Federal Government has given a directive that Universities should start first
degrees in entrepreneurship; they have further given Universities the privilege
of choosing to run the degrees at the Undergraduate and Postgraduate level.
The University
of Ibadan as a Postgraduate institution therefore has opted to run the degrees
at the Postgraduate level because for us, it’s about maintaining the prestige of
producingentrepreneurship educators for other universities. Apart from the fact
that if we make entrepreneurship an Undergraduate degree at this time, we stand
the risk of graduating students with degree in entrepreneurship who will still
go out and start looking for jobs.Secondly, we run trainings and our training
for business is ‘the SET’ Sustainable Enterprise Training. It’s a training that
spans over five weeks and it teaches all that a business owner would require running
a good business successfully. We also get students who are affiliated with our
centre to attend this training and we are planning to have the training soon.
In
our future trainings we would make those students that are already in
incubation to attend for free, it is part of the support, even though the
training cost one hundred and fifty thousand naira. As part of the package for
training, you are qualified to be recommended for certain business support
loans, like those from the bank of Industry. We will provide opportunity for
our students to also have investors look at their businesses and decide how
much they want to invest in such businesses. Also, the university has set aside
some money to support the students businesses.
Why did CEI decide to partner with
inceptum services for the Nigeria Campus Entrepreneurship Challenge?
At
the beginning of this year, this centre set out to do some sort of strategic
plan for the centre and part of what it is set to do was to increase all the
activities that would boost entrepreneurship activities on campus, part of
which is to also improve awareness. We have worked withEmekaOssai before. When
he brought ‘Wake Up and Smell the Coffee’, we were impressed with the way he
handled the programme, the turn out and the impact it had on the students. We
are very choosy and as such, despite the number of proposals coming in daily,
we chose to partner with the inceptum services. EmekaOssai already has track
records of good performance and credibility. Also, his proposal was well
articulated and we observed that it will definitely add value to our operations
in reaching out to the youth as well as empowering them.
As regards partnership, what role does
CEI play?
CEI
is a representative of the Universityand this is taking place on campus, so, it
was on the recommendation of the CEI that the university signed the MoU to
partner with the inceptum,otherwise, the University will not be involved. Also,
I have been talking to the School Management, Principal Officers and all the
stakeholders on campus, informing them about the programme, thereby, getting
their support.
In this partnership with the inceptum
services, what is the Critical Success Indicator for CEI and how do you measure
the productivity of the partnership after the whole project?
We
are working with Diamond FM to pitch a Radio show that will run through the
competition and feed the public necessary information about the Enterprise
Challenge. We’ll also have the school bulletin to publicize the event at
regular intervals. We expect a large turnout, so we will be measuring our impact
by the number of students that are in attendance. Our sponsors’ tent will be at
the GamalielOnosode Park so we will see how much interest and visit we get and
how much traffic is on the social media and the network.
Speaking
with EmekaOssaiearlier, I told him that I see no reason why this cannot be
serialised on National Television, he said it depends on the quality of the
production and I think we have all it takes on the university campus, including
our network to be able to do a good production that the sponsors will feel
proud of buying airtime to be on the show. By the time all these are
actualised, I believe everyone will realise the essence of entrepreneurship.
This will enable us to accomplish very major target on our plan of operation
for the year.
One basic challenge that students echo
all the time is, it’s difficult to be a student and an entrepreneur at the same
time, so, based on your experience with student and your experience as an
entrepreneur, do you think it is impossible for student to combine education
with business?
It is
absolutely possible and it can even be easy. Students oftentalk to me about
fantastic business ideas, some of which they have already started,so it is very
possible.Also, i can attest from my own experience because I became an
entrepreneur when I was a student on this campus and realising that it may be a
bit challenging, CEI is here to make that process a lot easier. Citing an
example from our students who started a business on animal rearing and are also
studying veterinary medicine, the board of CEI thought ofliaising with the
students’ supervisors such that the students’ project would be tied to their
businesses, that way, they are focused while they accomplish two purposes; the
business is growing and the project gets done well. Therefore, our arrangement
is working with the same singular purpose of building students who are vast and
deep in their field of study and research. It is the researchoutput that now
gets translated to commercial outfit.
However,
other colleagues from different part of the nation confuse skill acquisition with entrepreneurship, for instance, people
write books on soap making, hairdressing and so on, these are skills anyone can
acquire but we centre our entrepreneurship on intellectual property. That is,
in whatever field you find yourself or you choose to study, you can develop in
that field, get to the depth of research in that area and see how that can be
translated to economic value and for societal growth. That is what the UI model
is about.
Thank you.
Beautiful piece... I admire d spirit of enterpreneurship, somhw we dnt get it ryt in Nigeria mainly cos d older generation don't jus believe in it, hence discourage it. Thanks Prof. Oke (ma)
ReplyDeleteWhen will you start postgraduate studies in entrepreneurship ma?
ReplyDelete👏
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