First Technical University , Ibadan, Vice Chancellor, Prof Ayobami Salami, has urged the media to be more vibrant and focused on setting the right agenda for national development.
Salami spoke at the Press Week of the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ) Correspondents’ Chapel, Oyo State chapter, where he was the special guest.
Speaking on the topic: “Promoting professionalism and good governance”, he said: “You would agree with me that, with the deluge of developmental challenges confronting the nation, the media, as the fourth estate of the realm, occupies a strategic position in helping the nation negotiate a better deal. Like never before, it is certain that the media needs to be more vibrant and focused on setting the right agenda for development.”
Despite challenges the media was facing, Salami said the industry would overcome.
“Of course, we are not oblivious of the existential challenges bedeviling media practice. The realities show that the media industry is seriously hemorrhaging; from the burdening cost of news production, to the embarrassing magnitude of salary indebtedness, to increasing commercialisation of news items and ethical crisis. When you consider other issues of declining readership, revolutionary incursion of the online media, increasing threats to the lives of journalists, proliferation of fake news, among others, journalism in Nigeria, as it is the world over, is at a crossroads. All of these have certainly impacted negatively on the media today. Therefore, there is no better time to reflect on the state of the media than now.
“However, what is certain is that, like it did in the era of the military dictatorship, the media will overcome. This is because the media is gifted with some of the brightest and most courageous journalists on the continent. Therefore, I expect that the media would re-enact its heroic wand-not only to rescue the nation at such a time like this, but to also reinvent its practice and nudge it on the pathway of journalism.”
Speaking on TECH-U, which he described as the nation’s first self-sustaining public university, Salami said the university was conceived to provide functional, skill-oriented education to bridge the gap between graduates from tertiary institutions and the needs of the society.
“Nigeria is faced with myriad challenges, chief among which is youth unemployment. The problem of youth unemployment is multi-faceted. While the combined admission capacity of the university system, public and private, is barely up to 40 percent of qualified and eligible candidates, the few that are able to gain admission and pass out from the system have been found unemployable for lack of entrepreneurial attitudes as well as employability-related hard and soft skills. Tech-U was, therefore, established to expand access to university education and more importantly to address the employability gaps through entrepreneurial orientation of the average youth.”
The VC said the institution had partnered foreign universities to provide international exposure and opportunities to its students. He added that indigent students also get scholarship.