OAU Economics students set to hold leadership, entrepreneurship seminar

To drive entrepreneurship and leadership skills among students, the Nigerian Economics Students Association (NESA) of the Department of Economics, Obafemi Awolowo University, is set to hold a seminar.

The seminar which is the Leadership Qualities and Entrepreneurial Development (LQED) is scheduled to be held on February 3rd, 2024.

Kazeem Abiodun, president of NESA OAU chapter, said the programme is meant to bridge the employability gap between the training received in academia and the skills in demand in the industry, with a view to enhancing the employability capacity of every graduate of the department.

“LQED is tailored towards bridging the employability gap between the four walls of the classroom and the corporate world requirements. It also seeks to promote entrepreneurship and skill acquisition as it sees these as the lasting solutions to the worsening unemployment quandary across the globe,” Kazeem said.

He added that there are two sides to LQED of which the first side is to develop students’ potential to become a high-performing employee in the corporate world, while the other aim of the programme is to encourage students with brilliant business ideas to abandon job hunting for entrepreneurial possibilities.

It should be noted that the Leadership Qualities and Entrepreneurial Development (LQED) is a platform for young and motivated undergraduates in the Department of Economics, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile Ife to provide a sustainable solution to the unemployment dilemma by advocating employability, skills acquisition and entrepreneurship development among students.

The programme which started in 2002, has over the years, organized skills acquisition programmes and seminars to achieve these objectives.

The theme of the 20th Edition is: “Building a future-ready graduate: seamlessly integrating classroom knowledge, skill acquisition programme and personal development.” It was conceived to bridge the gap between the corporate world and the requisite skills and personal development required of an undergraduate in the 21st century.

Resource persons have been carefully selected from across a broad spectrum of the corporate world and academia. The speakers include David Samuel, a money market trader with the Stanbic IBTC Group; Fortune Tariah, human resource personnel at IHS Towers; Adebayo Adedokun, a senior lecturer at the Department of Economics, OAU Ile Ife; Oluwasogo Ogundowole a senior data engineer with Plura, and Abass Akinremi, President, OAU Student Union, among others.

As part of the preparations for the leadership seminar, NESA OAU Chapter organised various skill acquisition programmes including data analysis using powerBI and Stata, baking, and shoe making, among others from the 17th December, 2023 to January 28, 2024. The training programme was facilitated by different professionals in their respective fields.

Both the training programme and the forthcoming leadership seminar are managed by a committee chaired by Owoniya Damilare John and deputized by Adaiwo Doreen Chinenye.