The Director-General, Industrial Training Fund (ITF), Sir Joseph Ari, speaks with some selected journalists in Jos on the ITF strategic policy direction, worsening state of security and unemployment in the country among other issues. Isaac Shobayo brings excerpts.
Last year, you gave a sample of an Android phone that ITF intends to manufacture to Mr President and since then nothing has been heard of your innovation in this regard, have you backed out of this project?
Last year, we gave a sample of our Android phone mobile to Mr President, you know the issues surrounding productions are many. As I speak to you, I was able to inspect the assembly plant at the model skills centre in Abuja, because we needed to widen the capacity of the machines and they have now been installed. We needed to work with other regulatory agencies like the NCC and the legal framework among other things. And we are almost at the concluding end, the remaining thing is to have the machines and equipment installed fully and we need to fine-tune the legal framework for the purpose of intellectual property rights.
From June last year to now, a company call Afrione in Lagos has also approached us to partner with us in the area of capacity building and we have already signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Afrione; it is an Indian company in Lagos and they have seen the efforts we are making; they have also visited our model training centre in Abuja and expressed willingness to partner with us; we have signed the dotted lines for such partnership for capacity building. I think what should occupy the mind of Nigerians is to put legal work in proper perspective, shunning them out will be an easy task when all the papers and intellectual property rights have been worked upon.
How do you monitor your operation, especially those you have trained in one way or the other?
The aim of a plan is to know where you are going to, if there is no need for a review of a plan, there will be no need for a review. But we review our plans on account of a changing trend globally. There are a lot of challenges, you have heard of the unemployment rate, inflation rate and boom in population; you need to put your act right in order to address those challenges. That is why in this new direction, we didn’t reel out the figure like we used to do but in our last plan, we were reeling out the figure to you. These figures have also contributed, because those we were to train also train others and we were able to get a few directors from them.
In our management information systems, which we got through the monitoring and evaluation process in our system, we have all the data; we don’t joke with this. We have where each of the entrepreneurs is and because of that, we are able to monitor where they are. So why we keep on reviewing is because the variables of economic growth change with growing times and in the world today, we are not even talking about the GDP again, but the Human Development Index (HDI). In it, ITF plays a key role, because our mandate is to develop human processes and that is why we leave our assessment to the media and general public. Like I always say, the efforts we have made may not be sufficient, it will be like a drop in the ocean, because of our huge population, which is why we are calling on all stakeholders to join forces with us.
If you remember when we were reviewing plans and programmes, we saw the need for the National Apprenticeship and Traineeship System (NATS), the apprenticeship and training system that is obtained everywhere. In Igbo culture, they are used to this, the apprenticeship culture where somebody stays with his master and after sometimes, the master settles him and he goes to settle his own business and it goes like that. So Nigeria must revive its culture of apprenticeship, mentoring and training.
In Germany today, nearly two-thirds of young Germans are enrolled in apprenticeships once they leave full-time education using the German Dual Vocational and educational training (DVT), nine out of ten young trainees get a permanent job at the end, with others being offered shorter-term contracts. Germany is now dubbed a job wonderland and European champion with regard to its high employment rates. We believe that we can replicate similar successes in Nigeria giving greater commitment to skills acquisition that is considered by many today as the currency of the 21st Century. However, it must be noted that for us to replicate such successes, the problem of the perception that skills acquisition is the preserve of a section of our society has to be overcome, because this prejudice has discouraged people from perceiving skills acquisition as a real and better alternative to white-collar jobs.
When you are talking about impact, the population is huge and you know training a nation is not training a company, so we need more hand on deck and that is why we are advocating for other stakeholders to join forces, so that we can address and handle the huge population of our country. Our huge population is a competitive advantage to Nigeria, if you go to the other climes of the world now they are dealing with an aged population, if you have a skilled population they would just move to the other parts of the world and they would earn direct investment for this country. It is always good if the huge population is skilled, but if you just move people to other parts of the world, who are unskilled, we are going to have more problems in our hands. That is why we are faced with all these problems of banditry, youth restiveness, kidnapping, robbery, including human trafficking and prostitution. There is the need to key into skill acquisition, everybody is looking for a government job that is not available, and this is the only way out. Like I said, skills are now regarded as the currency of the 21st century.
With the numerous challenges facing Nigeria, ranging from unemployment, and economic crisis among others, can Nigeria overcome all these or what is ITF doing in this regard?
Despite the numerous achievements recorded by the ITF on account of these initiatives, we have realised that more needs to be done if we must fully tackle the numerous socio-economic problems that are bedevilling us as a country. Given the nature of your profession, you should be acutely aware that unemployment in Nigeria today is at over 33% as over 23 million Nigerians that are desirous to work cannot find jobs, mostly because of the absence of requisite skills. Poverty is equally on the rise with some estimates placing the number of Nigerians that are living in poverty to be over 90 million.
In the face of all these, our population has continued to soar with the World Bank estimating that Nigeria might hit 216 million by the end of this year. Equally worrisome is the spectre of the out-of-school children, which according to the United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF) is projected to be over 18.5 million. Although the Federal Government and, indeed, governments at all levels have implemented measures to tackle these challenges, it has become increasingly obvious that efforts have to be redoubled by all and sundry for us to effectively rid the country of these challenges.
What is the ITF doing to reach out to the teeming population, who desire to benefit from your programme?
The ITF is committed to leveraging technology for flexible service delivery and widening the scope of its operations through electronic and virtual learning platforms. In this regard, the ITF will develop and deploy appropriate learning content, coordinate all electronic and virtual learning programmes, monitor and evaluate the implementation of all electronic and virtual learning programmes and provide and deploy appropriate collaborative tools. With these, we hope to achieve effective and efficient service delivery, a satisfied customer base, improved patronage of our services, enhanced revenue generation, and an increased number of participants in our programmes by at least 40% annually.
Also, in this area, the ITF will provide the enabling environment to foster creativity, innovation, entrepreneurship and employability through its skills training centres by upgrading three of its skills training centres to Centres for Advanced Skills Training for Employment (CASTE) embedding production hubs, skills/e-hubs as well as creative and innovative hubs in its skills training centres and vocational wings and utilising existing skills training centres to develop the capacity of technical instructors.
ALSO READ FROM NIGERIAN TRIBUNE
- ASUU Extends Strike By 4 Weeks
- Forex Crisis: Fresh Facts Reveal NNPC’s $2.7bn Remittance To Its CBN Accounts In 6 Months
and then