Interview with the Director, Centre for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, University of Ibadan.

Professor Gbemisola Oke is the Director, Centre for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, University of Ibadan. As regards series of event piling up towards the maiden edition of The Nigerian Campus Enterprise Challenge, holding fast at the University of Ibadan this month (September), we deemed it fit to hear from her.

What purpose does the Centre for Entrepreneurship and Innovation serve?

The centre for entrepreneurship and innovation of the University of Ibadan is that coordinating body that enables students and staff entrepreneurial trainings and it cuts across the entire university.We are not limited to any Faculty or discipline, we take everybody within the university, we encourage and nurture entrepreneurs in this centre through training, courses and we are actually in the process of developing masters and PHD degree courses in Entrepreneurship.

How long has this centre been in existence?

The centre was established in 2002 though as a committee christened The Committee for University Private Sector Collaboration. The University realized that a University should not stand alone, they should occupy their positions as being able to influence the society positively, and if you look at a part of the mission statement of the University of Ibadan, it says ‘to be that body which enables and impacts positively, the society. That is what this centre is assisting the university to do.

Considering your background in medicine, how were you able to translate that into entrepreneurship and how have been able to take thiscentre to where it is presently?

I think the fact that somebody from the medical background would assume this position says a lot about what entrepreneurship is all about. Entrepreneurship is not discipline based, it’s an attitude, it is a way of doing things a better way. I have not found being the director of this place a challenge; it is just being like a second nature.

What can you say have been the challenges of the centre in the past two years?

I would say awareness is not as good as it ought to be. You said that many students are still not aware that thiscentre exists and for those who know a bit about the centre, they still don’t have a deep understanding of what we do and the extent at which we can carry them in becoming better and self-reliant.

How have you been able to tackle these challenges?

Well, we are still not there but we have increased our outreach and visibility in many ways, particularly encouraging the youth to take ownership of some of the programs like what Inceptum is doing as Part of our strategy. Otherwise, if it doesn’t fit into our strategy, we would not have encouraged it.

So far, what are the achievements of CEI and what are the plans for the immediate future?

I would say we are taking giant steps. Like I said we started from just a committee, a committee that was trying to sensitize the community, but from that point on we started from being able to float the ETR 301, a course available as an elective to every student, and it ends with a business plan which the university is determined and committed to funding.

We are also in the process of having higher degrees in entrepreneurship. Apart from that, and more significantly, is the impact that we have on our students in transforming them from mere students who think they qualify as graduates and are looking for employment to students who are actually competent for the real world. Right now, many of our students feel comfortable and confident to come in here and discuss their business ideas and we encourage them. We now also run courses that support businesses, we have business support services which we make open to our students as well as staff, we run free retirement programs, trainings to enable our staffs that are planning to retire to be better equipped to face retirement.

What kind of help does the centre render to student entrepreneurs?Is it in form of advisory, financial or in terms of putting them through the rudiment of what they are trying to do? Is the centre looking at running a first degree in entrepreneurship?

The Federal Government has given a directive that Universities should start first degrees in entrepreneurship; they have further given Universities the privilege of choosing to run the degrees at the Undergraduate and Postgraduate level.

The University of Ibadan as a Postgraduate institution therefore has opted to run the degrees at the Postgraduate level because for us, it’s about maintaining the prestige of producingentrepreneurship educators for other universities. Apart from the fact that if we make entrepreneurship an Undergraduate degree at this time, we stand the risk of graduating students with degree in entrepreneurship who will still go out and start looking for jobs.Secondly, we run trainings and our training for business is ‘the SET’ Sustainable Enterprise Training. It’s a training that spans over five weeks and it teaches all that a business owner would require running a good business successfully. We also get students who are affiliated with our centre to attend this training and we are planning to have the training soon.

In our future trainings we would make those students that are already in incubation to attend for free, it is part of the support, even though the training cost one hundred and fifty thousand naira. As part of the package for training, you are qualified to be recommended for certain business support loans, like those from the bank of Industry. We will provide opportunity for our students to also have investors look at their businesses and decide how much they want to invest in such businesses. Also, the university has set aside some money to support the students businesses.

Why did CEI decide to partner with inceptum services for the Nigeria Campus Entrepreneurship Challenge?

At the beginning of this year, this centre set out to do some sort of strategic plan for the centre and part of what it is set to do was to increase all the activities that would boost entrepreneurship activities on campus, part of which is to also improve awareness. We have worked withEmekaOssai before. When he brought ‘Wake Up and Smell the Coffee’, we were impressed with the way he handled the programme, the turn out and the impact it had on the students. We are very choosy and as such, despite the number of proposals coming in daily, we chose to partner with the inceptum services. EmekaOssai already has track records of good performance and credibility. Also, his proposal was well articulated and we observed that it will definitely add value to our operations in reaching out to the youth as well as empowering them.

As regards partnership, what role does CEI play?

CEI is a representative of the Universityand this is taking place on campus, so, it was on the recommendation of the CEI that the university signed the MoU to partner with the inceptum,otherwise, the University will not be involved. Also, I have been talking to the School Management, Principal Officers and all the stakeholders on campus, informing them about the programme, thereby, getting their support.

In this partnership with the inceptum services, what is the Critical Success Indicator for CEI and how do you measure the productivity of the partnership after the whole project?

We are working with Diamond FM to pitch a Radio show that will run through the competition and feed the public necessary information about the Enterprise Challenge. We’ll also have the school bulletin to publicize the event at regular intervals. We expect a large turnout, so we will be measuring our impact by the number of students that are in attendance. Our sponsors’ tent will be at the GamalielOnosode Park so we will see how much interest and visit we get and how much traffic is on the social media and the network.

Speaking with EmekaOssaiearlier, I told him that I see no reason why this cannot be serialised on National Television, he said it depends on the quality of the production and I think we have all it takes on the university campus, including our network to be able to do a good production that the sponsors will feel proud of buying airtime to be on the show. By the time all these are actualised, I believe everyone will realise the essence of entrepreneurship. This will enable us to accomplish very major target on our plan of operation for the year.

One basic challenge that students echo all the time is, it’s difficult to be a student and an entrepreneur at the same time, so, based on your experience with student and your experience as an entrepreneur, do you think it is impossible for student to combine education with business?

It is absolutely possible and it can even be easy. Students oftentalk to me about fantastic business ideas, some of which they have already started,so it is very possible.Also, i can attest from my own experience because I became an entrepreneur when I was a student on this campus and realising that it may be a bit challenging, CEI is here to make that process a lot easier. Citing an example from our students who started a business on animal rearing and are also studying veterinary medicine, the board of CEI thought ofliaising with the students’ supervisors such that the students’ project would be tied to their businesses, that way, they are focused while they accomplish two purposes; the business is growing and the project gets done well. Therefore, our arrangement is working with the same singular purpose of building students who are vast and deep in their field of study and research. It is the researchoutput that now gets translated to commercial outfit.

However, other colleagues from different part of the nation confuse skill acquisition with entrepreneurship, for instance, people write books on soap making, hairdressing and so on, these are skills anyone can acquire but we centre our entrepreneurship on intellectual property. That is, in whatever field you find yourself or you choose to study, you can develop in that field, get to the depth of research in that area and see how that can be translated to economic value and for societal growth. That is what the UI model is about.

Thank you.