Former Vice President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, said the virtue of integrity has become a scarce commodity, regretting that only a few possess it.
Osinbajo, who said this while delivering a keynote address at the matriculation ceremony of MIVA Open University in Abuja, noted that integrity is a currency for business and interpersonal relationships.
The professor tasked the students to imbibe critical ingredients to a purposeful life, which, according to him, includes integrity, hard work, and collaboration while they focus on their educational pursuits.
While reminding them that it is what endures beyond one’s immediate lifetime that matters, the former vice president charged them to be firm in their decisions.
Osinbajo said: “What, then, are some of the critical must-haves or must-do’s for real success? What are these critical things? The first is integrity. Integrity might sound like cliché today, but it is the cornerstone of real success.
“Let your yes be yes and your no be no. Be known for your consistency in applying high moral values or principles. If you borrow money, you pay. Don’t make promises you can’t fulfil. Integrity pays. It is getting scarcer. It’s getting more difficult to find people of integrity. So, it is in demand. And I can say that because people of integrity are in demand, they are much sought after by everyone.
“Even thieves are looking for men and women of integrity to keep their stolen money with. Life is a marathon. It’s not a hundred-metre dash. The person who will last that marathon is trustworthy because trust is the currency of business and interpersonal relationships. If you are known to have no integrity, everyone will soon know it. And because many of the best opportunities you will get will be based on recommendations, it is easy to become unmarketable.”
He said given the contemporary education methods across the world, modular education has the capacity to compete favourably with university degrees.
Modular education includes micro-credentials and digital badges which are short training targeted at providing students with particular skills or knowledge usually specifically required in a particular industry or profession.
According to him, this is a result of high preferences in the area of employability which is centred on innovation, efficiency, tech-savvy, problem-solving techniques and skilled collaboration with employers.
In employment criteria, according to him, emphasis is no longer on how much information one has, but on how it can be used to solve real-life problems which are multifaceted and not tied to the curricula in many of the old and existing disciplines.
Osinbajo said teaching methods and resources are changing and must continue to evolve thereby increasingly personalized forms of education to encourage studying at one’s own pace.
Hear him: “So micro-education could potentially rival university degrees in the future, especially as the world of work and learning continues to evolve.
“Adaptive learning platforms can now, as you know, use artificial intelligence to design even coursework to meet the specific needs of every individual student and the best pace at which to teach each student.
“Now and in the future, what we will teach, how we will teach, will never be the same again. This change is motivated by the type and quality of employees that the market wants today and that the market will take for granted tomorrow. And also how technology, especially artificial intelligence and machine learning, is rapidly transforming business, the professions, and the entire marketplace.
“We are also going to see more teaching using virtual and augmented reality. All these sorts of equipment are already available. Technologies that use these immersive tools will provide hands-on learning that can be repeated over and over again by the student.”
