By Faith Olaniran, Folajimi Orintunsin & Tolulope Ajobiewe, FUT MINNA

It was a remarkable convocation ceremony at the Federal University of Technology (FUT), Minna, Niger State penultimate Saturday, as about 33 of the 2,571 students presented for the 2009/2010 academic session graduation bagged first class honours degrees.

Being the 19th and 20th convocation ceremonies of the institution, the Vice-Chancellor of the institution, Professor Mohammad Salihu Audu, noted that 2,392 graduated in 2010/2011 while 179 were spill over students of 2009/2010 set.

Most of the graduands who are current Batch B and C set of the National Youth Service Corps had to leave their places of primary assignment to attend the occasion with their loved ones and well wishers.

Speaking at the convocation, President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, represented by the Minister for Education, Professor Ruqayyatu Ahmed Rufa’i urged the youths in the nation to be resilient and determined even in the face of daunting challenges, giving the assurance that their perseverance will not be in vain as his administration is putting all in place to ensure that Nigeria is better than they met it.

He further said that university administrators should ensure that peace and stability reign in the system while calling for their support for government policies in order to move the nation forward.

He admitted that the educational sector in the country has suffered a long time structural deficiency, and vowed not to further tolerate the inefficiencies that characterized the sector and caused its systemic failure.

“Our nation today finds itself being distracted from its march towards greatness by ideologues motivated by sundry primordial instincts. We can only fight them by beaming a thousand points of light at the bastions of darkness and fear and we need our educationists to make this possible.

“We have high expectations of our tertiary institutions and I personally will not tolerate the inefficiencies which are causing our educational system to fail our children. We are presently effecting a silent revolution in the delivery of knowledge to our students and this is because of the realisation that the educational sector has, for long, been faced with structural deficiencies,” Jonathan said.