By Milicent Ifeanyichukwu
The Vice Chancellor, Trinity University, Prof. Clement Kolawole, on Friday urged students to activate their potential to remain prosperous.
The professor gave the advice during a public lecture organised by the Faculty of Arts, Management and Social Sciences of the university.
He spoke on the theme: “Retaining Talents: Prosperity Options for the Nigerian University Community”.
According to Kolawole, there is large scale of unemployment and poverty in the world, hence, activating ones potential will ensure an edge for the person.
“Those of us who are aware of what is happening globally, we now know that it is not enough to have certificates, because certificates are no longer end in themselves.
“So you also need to be able to take on the challenges of unemployment, the challenges confronting large scale poverty that is in the world.
“This kind of lecture is to prepare our students and ourselves to see what we can do in addition to our core mandate, because our core mandate is sharing knowledge and sharing abundance of prosperity.
“Some of us are sitting on prosperity. We have potential that are not activated. So when we have lectures like this, our eyes are open as to what is possible, legitimate, lawful, legal, that we can do to improve our status.
“Nobody is born poor. If you don’t activate the ideas that you have, you remain poor, you don’t blame God and blame anybody for it,” the VC said.
Delivering the lecture, the Guest Lecturer, Dr Abib Olamitoye, urged the students to create better versions of themselves daily, and learn about prosperity.
Olamitoye said to be prosperous was learnable.
He advised that one could learn from the people who had gone through the way to achieve prosperity.
According to him, Rome was not built in a day, hence, one should grow a business organically, which is to grow a business that endures.
“Great haste is great waste. A lot of them will save their lives by getting rich gradually. Growing organically is the only way the mind can accommodate gradual wealth, sudden wealth is a precursor of social disaster.
“Prosperity is learnable. It is teachable. If you have not prospered before, and you want to prosper, the common sense approach is to learn from those who have prospered.
“To realise that certain people have learnt these principles of prosperity, and have actually profited from the fortune, and have gone ahead to write books for others who seek such wealth.
“Rather than working hard with great sweat, read the books and achieve that mindset that attracts the kind of thing you want,” he said.
In his welcome address, Dr David Samuel, the acting Dean of the Faculty of Arts, Management and Social Sciences, said that the lecture addressed a critical issue in higher education.
Samuel said that in a rapidly globalising world, retaining talent within the universities was paramount for fostering innovation, driving research excellence, and ensuring the overall prosperity of academic institutions.
He said that the lecture would explore strategies for cultivating an environment that not only attracted, but also retained the brightest minds, thereby contributing to the long-term development of university community and the nation at large.