Thousands of students from the University of Lagos have participated in the FUCAP Campus Seminar aimed to equip young people with 21st-century skills to enable them to thrive as successful professionals and entrepreneurs.
Speaking at the venue of the event at the Main Auditorium of the University of Lagos (UNILAG) in Lagos State recently, the Programme Specialist at UNICEF Nigeria, Bharat Kundra, said that the initiative is for young people to succeed in workplaces.
According to him, the programme is aimed to reach three million Nigerian youths and equip 700,000 with essential skills for the future workplace by 2025.
Kundra said that the objective is to expose Nigerian youths to 21st-century skills to enable them to transform society and establish themselves as professionals and entrepreneurs.
The programme was organised by UNICEF in partnership with Unilever Nigeria and the University of Lagos.
The UNICEF Programme Specialist said the programme consists of four components, including career seminars, entrepreneurship skills courses, work experience, and youth challenges.
Already, 10 of the seminars have been conducted in different universities across the country, Kundra said.
“My advice to young people is, please be optimistic. Take initiative. And there will be many organisations that will come and support you on that as well.”
Speaking on the challenges, the programme specialist at UNICEFsaid, “Challenges exist all over the world.
“Every country has its own unique challenge. No country is immune to challenges. So, in Nigeria, we also face some challenges.”
He listed some of the challenges as access to devices, access to the internet, access to electricity, and saying these are key challenges that every young person faces across Africa and across the world as well. It’s not just a local problem.”
According to him, you see approximately 1,000 to 2,000 students inside.
“This entire mobilisation has been done by young people. We have an army of volunteers who have come forward and said, “I want to contribute.” I want to learn, and I want to help other young people learn as well.
“So, similarly to our other FUCAP programme as well, even if it was an online course, we worked with a set of volunteers. We gave them certain training. We gave them a toolkit.”
He disclosed that UNICEF is working in 20 universities in the first year. “We will expand to more universities as well.
“But to shortlist these 20 universities, we also ran a very, big communication drive. We asked young people from across Nigeria to participate in an online entrepreneurship skills course. So, about 10,000 young people participated in the first one month of that programme.
According to him, the target is 2026. Our target is 20 million young people connected to opportunities by 2030.”
“So, Unilever is one of our partnerships. So, our target would be that every young person who goes through the FUCAP experience is able to utilise that experience meaningfully to build a career. Whether it’s jobs, whether it’s entrepreneurship, whether it’s economy, self-employment, or even becoming a volunteer.”
On her part, Zainab Ajadi, People Partner at Unilever Nigeria and Lead Project Coordinator of the FUCAP seminar said that the entrepreneurship concept was targeted to groom future entrepreneurs and employers who are willing to take risks to grow their businesses.
Ajadi noted that the collaboration with UNICEF was to create awareness about the opportunities, equipping youths for the future and enabling them to lead purposeful lives. She mentioned that one of the challenges faced was changing youths’ mindsets and helping them envision the future so they could adapt accordingly.
In her remarks, Prof. Ayodele Atsenuwa, Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Development Services) UNILAG said that the institution, through its entrepreneurship programmes, was developing opportunities and preparing students to have an edge in the workplace upon graduation.
Atsenuwa urged the students to make maximum use of the FUCAP to prepare themselves for the blue economy.
“You students of this great institution and our alumni are our pride.”
Mr Elijah Olubiyi, a 200-level student of the Faculty of Law, UNILAG, and a participant at the seminar, said the presentations had inspired and helped to direct his passion to the right side.
Olubiyi, however, commended UNICEF and Unilever for putting up the seminar, which, according to him, has added more valuable knowledge to the student’s choice of career. He described the programme as laudable and top-notch.
Meanwhile, some students of the University have taken turns to commend Unilever for the wonderful initiative, which they said taught them a lot about self-confidence, self-esteem, and the disadvantages of having an inferiority complex.
Balogun Abubakri, a part 2 student of the Department of Business Education, Elijah Eniola, a part three Law student and Obey Victoria, a part three student of Bio-Chemistry all lauded the company just as they charged their fellow students to take the programme seriously.
“We’re excited about this programme because it taught us about opportunities we’re going to look out for in life, how to develop self-esteem, build confidence and relate with people and what to expect in workplaces among other things. We look forward to the sustainability of the seminar, we appeal to our fellow students to embrace it because it will help in shaping their future career,” they chorused.
