Mary Ekah
The 12th Convocation ceremony and conferment of Honourary Doctorate Degrees as well as the presentation of Prizes to graduates of Covenant University, witnessed a lot of excitement as a total of 188 students bagged First Class degrees out of 1,426 students graduated in the 2016/2017 academic session while, 568 had Second class upper honours and 322 with Second class lower, 47 with third class and 301 post graduate students of Covenant University recently. The ceremony which took place at the school premises in Ota, Ogun State had a former Vice President and Secretary General of African Development Bank(ADB), Ms Cecilia Aykintomide as the Guest Speaker.
Vice Chancellor of Covenant University, Prof. Aderemi Aaron Atayero, said the university has continued to be at the cutting edge of innovation and research-oriented programmes that have distinguished the students and make them compete with their counterpart at world class level.
One of the graduands, 21-year-old Uzoamaka Pauline Okoro is one of the 188 students who graduated from convent University in the 2016/2017 academic session with a first class, having scored 4.73 CGPA. She and other students represented Nigeria at the Annual Nuclear Energy Summit in Mexico in 2017. She spoke on how the social media could negatively impact on students.
Speaking on what inspired her to read Industrial Physics and how she managed to graduate with a first class degree, Okoro said, “Initially, I planned to read Petroleum Engineering but was offered another course of study: Industrial Physics. As a person I believe in God’s grace and handwork as well. I will say that the grace of God has been upon my life because going through school, I was not the only intelligent student around but I had to put in some effort as a person. Although, some students who graduated with a second class upper or lower division and even a third class could be more brilliant. The difference is persistence, more especially God’s grace. At that time the margin was broad, I had to invest in myself to meet up with other students’ academic performance.†On what is expected of her she said, “The world should expecting me to cut a dent in the energy space because that is what I am looking at. I would change the Nigeria energy sector. It is not all about certificate but I can defend my certificate.â€
