Africa’s richest man Aliko Dangote has continued in his avowed commitment to encouraging entrepreneurship in the country, with the donation of another N1.2 billion structure for the running of a business school in Bayero University, Kano (BUK), northern Nigeria.
The building which will be handed over to the university management formally next month is a state of the art edifice and will effectively mark the commencement of study of business in the institution and the first in the Northern part of Nigeria.
“We have the ambition to have a business school and we could not go ahead with the project because there was no befitting structure to accommodate the kind of dream we had but with Dangote coming in about five years ago and that was when the University decided to say this is the time to have the business school,” said the BUK Dean of Faculty of Dangote Business School, Professor Murtala Sagagi, who also noted that there was no Business School in Bayero University, Kano (BUK) until Dangote started the project.
Sagagi also noted that Kano is the second most vibrant commercial city in the country after Lagos. “We have industries, banks, a different type of businesses, micro, small, medium and large enterprises.”
“We are having large-scale investors from China, Spain and all over the world coming to Kano to make investment and this means the State needs an institution, a kind of faculty, school that can able to develop the capacity not only the management of those organisations but those people who are working in different units or department within the organisation.”
The dean added that “the Dangote Business School is a great development and we hope that this business school will not only be seen as a Kano business school or Northern business school because I can tell you about 40 percent of our students are not from Kano and more than 22 percent of our student are from Southern part of the country.”
It would be recalled that Dangote is also building a similar business school in the University of Ibadan, which would be commissioned anytime soon.
The Business Schools being undertaken by the Aliko Dangote Foundation, according to the President of Dangote Group, is part of the efforts to build entrepreneurship in the sub-consciousness of Nigerians through education at the highest level.
He explained that the situation Nigeria has found itself necessitates revisiting school curriculums to reflect the new consciousness of entrepreneurship and manufacturing and efforts made to encourage the study of business especially at the second level in the university.
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