Lagos govt to reduce unemployment growing rate with jobs initiative

Lagos State government on Friday said its job initiative skills designed for final year students and those in penultimate classes are targeted at equipping students with essential skills that will make them relevant and their services essential in the labour market.

Special Adviser (SA) to Governor Sanwo-Olu on Education, Barrister Tokunbo Wahab, disclosed this during a Ministerial Press Briefing to mark the 2nd Year Anniversary of Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu’s administration.

Wahab also disclosed that, through the state government’s Jobs Lagos Initiative (JLI), a total of 28,000 final year students and those in penultimate classes across all the State-owned Tertiary Institutions had been trained in different employability skills.

According to him, the skills include: Entrepreneurship, Work Readiness tools, Soft Skills, Market Aligned courses, among others, saying this was to make them suitable for employment and be competitive in the global market.

The governor’s aide said the jobs initiative programme of the state government, being part of the measures put in place to reduce unemployment rate in the state, was aimed at preparing final year and penultimate students of tertiary institutions for immediate entry into the workforce as employees and employers of labour by equipping them with the market aligned knowledge, soft skills, business tools and the mindset reorientation in the world of work.

He explained that Governor Sanwo-Olu was worried by the growing rate of unemployment in the country and came up with the initiative to help the youths develop their skills and break the barriers standing between them and job opportunities.

Wahab, while lamenting that a large number of graduates turned out yearly by the nation’s institutions of higher learning lacked employability skills, explained that the need to bridge the gap in order to reduce the growing rate of the unemployment rate and its attendant consequences was one of the reasons why the state government had not relented in building capacity and committing resources to skills acquisition and vocational development.

“Lack of employability skills exacerbates Nigeria’s unemployment problem. Not a few employers have complained about the skills mismatch in the employment market, they lament that graduates of our institutions of higher learning come out lacking both technical and soft skills to fit into the workplace,” he lamented.

He said the state government sought the collaboration of the private sector, having realized this gap, to work with the Office of the Special Adviser on Education to develop a programme that would bridge the gap and empower its teeming young population and thereby, prepare them ahead for the workplace challenges.

The Special Adviser, while giving credits to his predecessor in office, Mr Obafela Bank- Olemoh, for the initiative, asserted that the present administration had widened the scope of the project, saying that this had made it possible for more people to benefit from the inclusion of those in penultimate classes.

On the Eko Digital initiative, Wahab explained that the state government, in partnership with Advent Management Solutions & Loftylnc Allied Partners, was leveraging on ICT to train and equip young students and pupils in Lagos government-owned primary and high schools with the requisite knowledge, skills and technical Know- how that would enable them to thrive in the technology space in a couple of years.

According to him, the consultants have collaborated with the state government to train over 120,000 students/pupils in 720 schools across the state in the areas of computer Basics, Scratch, and Use of internet, Cloud services, and World Wide Web designs, among other computer programming.

“Eko Digital is a programme designed to benefit the students and pupils in Lagos State with the right coding and technology skills that will enable them compete successfully with their counterparts from any part of the world,” he affirmed.

Besides, he pointed out that Eko Digital initiatives would, among other things help to curb youth’s restiveness as it would provide them with the right skills that would enable them get valuable jobs after completing their education, adding that the initiative would also equip young people with industry certified skills needed to get instant employment both within and outside the country.

The Special Adviser, while commending Governor Sanwo-Olu for taking governance to the next level of technological development, pledged the commitment of his Office to efficient implementation of the state’s sustainable educational policies that would make Lagos rank among the best in the world.

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