GRADUATION SPEECH 2020/2021

It has always been a privilege from day one to serve as your president and I want to congratulate all our graduates from Voronezh, to Belgorod, Moscow, Kazan, Rostov, and Saint Petersburg.

“As you graduate, and as you deal with your excitement and your doubts today, I urge you to try and create the world you want to live in. Minister to the world in a way that can change it. Minister radically in a real, active, practical, get-your-hands-dirty way.”

Today, I want to talk briefly about 2 things. The first is an extract from Steve Job’s speech in 2005 at Stanford:

“You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it.”

And from President Obama’s commencement address at Howard University in 2016:

“You have to go through life with more than just passion for change; you need a strategy. I’ll repeat that. I want you to have passion, but you have to have a strategy. Not just awareness, but action. Not just hashtags, but deliveries.”

As you graduate today, you will be awarded a certificate of induction into the alumni body of the Association of Nigerian scholarship students in Russia under BEA. The establishment of the alumni body will be my final major assignment as the President of this great association as I have no plans of running for a second tenure. Because of this project, I’ll be working with leaders of the commonwealth scholarship and as well as the Federal scholarship board to ensure that this body stands recognized in the corridors of power.

Some benefits of this alumni body include:

1. Easy navigation to your dream country. Graduates of ANSSIR are located worldwide, and having a strong alumni body brings us together as they’ll play a huge role in supporting us to settle in the country of our choice.

2. Supporting our graduates secure jobs easily.

3. Connecting graduates to major companies in their areas of study.

4. Tracing – I’ll explain with the example that the Asst. Director from FSB gave.

Let’s say you’re a doctor based in Hungary, if a Nigerian government official located in that country at the moment needs medical help, with the help of tracing system, the doctor can be easily traced and contacted. Tracing helps track people and connect them to possible opportunities available around them. It’s through the help of tracing that we can achieve easy navigation to your dream country.

There are lots of benefits we can go on and on.

In conclusion, as you graduate learn from every mistake because every experience, encounter, and particularly your mistakes are there to teach you and force you into being more who you are. And then figure out what is the next right move. And the key to life is to develop an internal moral, emotional G.P.S. that can tell you which way to go.

Benjamin Okoro
President