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By TOM CHIAHEMEN, Abuja
In furtherance of its efforts to equip as many Nigerians as possible with skills for employability and entrepreneurship, the Industrial Training Fund (ITF), has unveiled eleven implementable programmes for year 2019, with the aim of training about 18,000 participants within the next 3 to 6 months.
Director-General/Chief Executive of the ITF, Sir Joseph N. Ari, who made this known at a press briefing in Abuja on Thursday, listed the programmes to include National Industrial Skills Development Programme (NISDP), Women Skills Empowerment Programme (WOSEP), Air-conditioning and Refrigeration (Training on Wheels), Design and Garment Making (Training on Wheels) for Nigerian youths under the Passion to Profession Programme (P2PP) and, Skills Training and Empowerment Programme for the Physically Challenged (STEPP-C).
Others are: Construction Skills Empowerment Programme (CONSEP), Aqua-Culture (Fish Farming), Manure Production, Crop Production (Green House Technology), Poultry Farming and, Training Programme Development on International Marketing and Test Running.
Highlighting the number of beneficiaries for each of the programmes, Sir Ari said the NISDP would train 11,000 persons, WOSEP (360), Air-Conditioning and Refrigeration (90), Design and Garment Making (90), STEPP-C (120), CONSEP (180), Fish Farming (150), Manure Production (150), Crop Production (150) and Poultry Farming (150).
Apart from the NISDP that will be implemented in all States of the Federation including the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), the rest of the programmes will be implemented on rotational basis among the States, Ari explained.
He recalled that in line with the policy of the Buhari Administration to create jobs and reduce poverty, the ITF, between late 2016 and 2018, trained over 450,000 Nigerians, “90 percent of whom are today in productive endeavours either as paid employees or as entrepreneurs that are even employing others.”
According to the Director-General, the commitment of the ITF to skills acquisition was premised on the fact that “it remains the most viable and sustainable solution to rising unemployment and poverty that have continued to defy the best efforts of Governmental and non-Governmental approaches.”
Ari said: “There are countless reasons for us to worry as Governments and as institutions vested with the arduous task of equipping Nigerians with the life skills for employability and entrepreneurship. There is no doubt that unemployment has wrought a terrible damage on all facets of our national life. No reasonable analysis will divorce unemployment from the needless incidences of violence that have claimed thousands of lives across the Nation.”
“It will equally be difficult to separate rising criminality and harmful social vices that are being perpetrated by Nigerians because of unemployment and the attendant poverty. Consequently, our population that ordinarily should be a resource has become an albatross because we cannot provide a greater proportion of our population with a source of livelihood,” he lamented.
He observed that the scary and staggering statistics from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) should not only be a source of worry for any administration that is as committed to the welfare of Nigerians. For instance, according to the NBS Report of the last Quarter of 2018, “the number of Nigerians without jobs between the 4th Quarter of 2017 to the 3rd Quarter of 2018, increased from 17.6 million in the 4th Quarter of 2017 to 20.9 million in the 3rd Quarter of 2018.”
This is despite the fact that the number of people in employment increased from 68.4 million in the 3rd Quarter of 2015 to 68.72 million in the 3rd Quarter of 2016 to 69.09 million in the 3rd Quarter of 2017 and 69.53 million in the 3rd Quarter of 2018.
Ari also disclosed that preliminary activities for the implementation of the programmes including procurement of crested T-Shirts and Face Caps, screening of participants and selection of training centres had commenced, preparatory for the take-off, starting with the NISDP scheduled for August 2019.
He appealed to Nigerians to support Government’s efforts to create jobs and reduce poverty through skills acquisition rather than view it as the responsibility of the ITF and other Agencies of the Federal Government alone.
“The co-operation and collaboration of all State Governments, the Organised Private Sector (OPS), politicians and other stakeholders will be critical for a multiplier effect. Our doors are therefore wide open for collaboration in any aspect of human capacity development and vocational and technical skills training,” he said.
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