The Minister of Solid Minerals Development, Dr. Kayode Fayemi, has tasked graduates to stop complaining and blaming government and others for challenges they encounter in life.
He said neither government nor the citizens owe them anything, saying they must work hard to achieve success.
The minister stated these while delivering the 2016 convocation lecture of the University of Lagos (UNILAG) at the J. F. Ade Ajayi Auditorium on Monday.
The lecture was themed: “Building a successor-generation: Reflections on values and knowledge in nation building.”
Dr Fayemi said he did not just find himself at the top of the ladder of life, but had also paid the necessary price by engaging in odd and menial jobs such as driving public taxis and working as a security guard both in Nigeria and during his postgraduate days in the United Kingdom.
He said: “Quit whining – no one owes you anything. The earlier we realise that no one owes us anything, the better for us and the more prepared we would be to face life’s challenges. Don’t think you are entitled to a job, just because of your parents’ influence or what they have or your good grades. The only guarantee you have in this life is what you do for yourself with the grace God has bestowed on us all.
“You have to be prepared to bend backwards and do what you might consider to be beneath you, because of the bigger picture. As a UNILAG graduate and a postgraduate student at the United Kingdom, I have also driven taxis and worked as a security guard, amongst several other menial jobs I did in the past to survive.”
Fayemi noted that increasing knowledge, discipline, flexibility, passion, courage, among others were keys to differentiating those that are “merely certificated from those that are truly educated UNILAG graduates.”
