RAYMOND OZOJI
Provost of the Federal Cooperative College, Oji River, Enugu State, Nigeria, Dr. Owan Obodagu Tonica, says the institution is a breeding ground for entrepreneurs who will become wealth creators and employment providers after their sojourn in the college.
Dr. Owan, who spoke through the Head of Department of Cooperative Economics and Management of the institution, Dr. Egor Hikarofemise, on the occasion of the 2022 World Cooperative Day tagged “Cooperatives Build The World” said students of the institution gained practical knowledge and skills relevant to their choice areas of discipline to enable them to become self-employed, self-reliant, self-dependent and wealth creators while helping to reduce unemployment and alleviate poverty in the country.
The Provost noted that in line with the theme of this year’s global celebration of cooperatives, the emphasis is on how cooperatives could be used as veritable platforms to build the world economically and otherwise.
He said practical skills acquisition programmes have been introduced into the college curriculum to enable the students to learn by doing what they were taught in the classrooms. This, according to him, would ultimately transform the students into employers of labour.
The Provost mentioned some of the cardinal principles of Cooperatives to include love, fairness, solidarity, to list just a few, adding that entrepreneurship centres exist in the school where students undergo practicals on the theories they learnt in the classrooms as stipulated by the National Board for Technical Education who made it mandatory that every student that would graduate from the college must undergo practical training sessions free of charge on hand craft and a host of other very important skills.
He said the National Board for Technical Education due to the rate of employment in the country insisted that entrepreneurship programmes should be enshrined in the college for students to access to enable them to attain their full potentials and graduate from the college as potential business owners who will in turn ensure stability in the rural areas in order to curb rural-urban migration in the country.
The Provost maintained that the Federal Cooperative College Oji River has continued to fullfil its mandate of providing the technical know-how and requisite skills for her undergraduates to enable them to contribute their own quota especially to rural development and by extension national development.