By Clare Nwaiwu
No fewer than 238 students of Covenant University, Ota, Ogun State, on Friday graduated with first class honours’ degrees at the university’s 2017/2018 Convocation ceremony.
Covenant’s Vice-Chancellor, Prof. Aaron Atayero, made the disclosure during the school’s 13th Convocation, Conferment of Honorary Doctorate Degrees and presentation of prizes to its deserving students in Ota.
A total of 1887 students graduated for 2017/2018 Academic Session. These were made up of 238 first class honours, 746 second class upper honours, 452 second class lower, 86 third class and 365 post-graduate students.
The Vice Chancellor said that the graduates were not trained to seek but to provide employment and where they get employed, they should distinguish themselves as has been testified by employers’ of labour.
“All over the world, our graduates are always breaking the grounds in many human endeavours,” he said.
Atayero ascribed the success and milestone achieved by the institution to the high quality of its teaching linked with high quality research.
[penci_blockquote style=”style-2″ align=”none” author=””]I implore you all to start thinking about changing and start thinking of solutions to challenges confronting the nation[/penci_blockquote]
He implored the graduating students to deploy all they had been through in solving the nation’s problems including leadership, unemployment, poverty, wanton killings, infrastructural deficit and poor health services.
The school’s Chancellor, Dr David Oyedepo, who also spoke noted that there was the need to redefine democracy in the country so as to surmount its challenges. He pointed out that leadership was not just about talking but taking the lead.
According to him, leadership is not an endowment, but a product of outstanding accomplishments.
He affirmed that the vision of the institution was to raise a new generation of leaders in every area of human endeavour, which, he said, would engender great changes in Nigeria, Africa and the world at large.
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“I implore you all to start thinking about changing and start thinking of solutions to challenges confronting the nation,” he said.
Dr. Oyedepo, who is also the General Overseer of the Living Faith International Church, advised the graduating students to imbibe and uphold the core values of the institution.
he keynote speaker at the event and the Chairman, First Bank of Nigeria PLC, Mrs Ibukun Awosika, urged the graduating students to identify every problem as an opportunity to proffer solutions to them, especially, those confronting the country.
Awosika said that the graduates had better opportunities because they had real value of education from a good university that impacted quality education on them.
Miss Salami Toluwani, from the Department of Industrial Chemistry, College of Sciences emerged the best student with a Cumulative Grade Point of Average (CGPA) of 4.99.