President of the African Development Bank Group (AfDB), Dr. Akinwumi A. Adesina, has been announced as the keynote speaker at the American University of Nigeria (AUN)’s 12th Commencement ceremony scheduled to hold at the Aliyu Musdafa Commencement Hall on July 10, 2021.
Dr. Margee Ensign, who was reappointed as President by the AUN Board of Trustees in June, has described Dr. Adesina as an internationally regarded and outstanding administrator and change agent, a distinguished Nigerian whose choice as keynote speaker underscores the university’s global development perspective.
“We are so honored at AUN to have Dr. Akinwumi Adesina as our Keynote Speaker at this historic Commencement,” Dr. Ensign said in a statement by the university’s spokesperson, Mr Daniel Okereke, on Monday.
“He is one of the most distinguished and well respected Nigerian public figures in the world, and I hope his speech will inspire our graduates, all of whom have received a first-class and development-oriented education, to become active players in the global economy. We eagerly look forward to receiving him and his delegation at our safe and secure campus in Yola,” she said.
Africa’s first development university, offering American-style liberal arts education through a technology-driven pedagogy, AUN will be pulling off a historic first on three fronts with the graduation ceremony.
Having passed the threshold of 32 uninterrupted academic semesters, AUN’s Class of 2020, whose graduation ceremony was put on hold in compliance with prevailing Covid-19 restrictions, will join the Class of 2021 in what will become the University’s first double Commencement ceremony.
The ceremony will also see the graduation of AUN’s fist Law School class. They will be receiving their graduation certificates from a returning President Ensign. who administered their Community Oath of Allegiance five years ago during their matriculation ceremony in 2016.
One of Nigeria’s most celebrated public officers, Dr. Adesina, who served as Nigeria’s Minister of Agriculture from 2011 to 2015, was first elected President of the 80-nation member African Development Bank Group on May 28, 2015. In appreciation of his work helping to improve the lives of hundreds of millions of Africans, he was unanimously re-elected for a second five-year term on August 27, 2020.
The American University of Nigeria, which offers 45 Majors and 19 Minors from its Schools of Arts & Sciences, Business & Entrepreneurship, Information Technology & Computing, Law, and Engineering, is a diverse community with a global faculty and admits students from every state of Nigeria and from throughout the world.
