The Director-General, Industrial
Training Fund, Mrs. Juliet Chukkas-Onaeko, says skills acquisition is
important in the quest to industrialise the country. She spoke with MAUREEN AZUH
Nothing has been heard about the ITF in recent times; what has the organisation been up to?
I have identified this problem; I know
that we have to carry people along because what we have done so far is
like blinking in the dark; nobody sees you when you do that. We are
coming out with a robust communication strategy that will take in
everything we do; our essence and what we hope to achieve.
There is need to create more awareness
about what the ITF is all about; the benefits and the need to help more
people to make their daily contribution to the economy. We are coming
out with a robust solution. My appointment is four years renewable; so,
we don’t want to do a one-off awareness campaign; we must do something
that will be sustained.
You recently talked about
training two million people yearly on skills aimed at boosting economic
activities. How feasible is this number considering the fact that most
Nigerians value certificates more than skills?
With the current trends and issues that
are confronting developing countries all over the world, I don’t think
anyone would want to equate technical skills to university education.
This is something that is important; technical skills are urgently
required to empower people. I think it is just about the mindset; that
is where the awareness comes in, we need to have different interactive
sessions with stakeholders and enlighten more of the youth to make them
see the importance of acquiring technical skills. We need people who are
skilled to run our industries. The government is doing everything to
attract investment into Nigeria. The President came up with the
transformation agenda and there is also the National Industrial Skills
Development Programme, all aimed at industrialising Nigeria.
There are so many positive things coming
out of Nigeria but people do not even know about them. And more
investors are coming into the country which means we must have the
relevant skills to drive their investment; we don’t want them to bring
in low-middle level people from their countries to run the system for
us. We want to run the system by ourselves; we want indigenous people to
take up these posts.
That is why we are carrying out the
National Skills Gap Assessment in collaboration with UNIDO to ensure
that we are clearly able to identify where the skills and gaps are, and
the areas that are being occupied by Nigerians and those by foreigners
and how we can fill the remaining gaps. This is very important in the
quest to industrialiseNigeria.
Despite all the efforts that are
being made, stakeholders say productivity level is still very low and
that is why Nigerian goods and services are not very competitive in the
global market. What is your reaction to this and how can things be done
differently?
The government has been doing a lot
including reforming the power sector which is one area people have
pointed out as negatively affecting the growth of the economy. But the
other area which is also important and has actually been identified by
the Nigerian Industrial Development Plan is the lack of accessibility to
funding and infrastructure.
Our mandate is to develop indigenous
manpower for our economy, we need to strategise and reposition the ITF
to carry out this mandate. The number we are training right now is not
enough; we need to up the ante.
And if we say our products are not
competing well internationally, it is also tied to the skills these
people have. If you ask a carpenter, for instance, to make you a table,
of course, he can knock wood together but if his proficiency level is
low, his product will be of low quality, and the attention to details
might not be there. It will be obvious that the person has not been
taken through international best practices in producing that particular
product. That is where we are focusing on – training these people to be
proficient in what they do so that their products can be acceptable
wherever they are taken to.
We need to focus on the proficiency
level of our workers and artisans, making sure that they are empowered
to be excellent in what they do because we need skilled people to drive
economic growth.
How does the ITF empower trainees apart from training?
Under the National Enterprise
Development Programme, the ITF is mandated to train people in special
trade areas. Now, these people are not left alone. Small and Medium
Enterprises Development Agency of Nigeria comes in to give them the
necessary entrepreneurial skills and get them into cooperatives while
the Bank of Industry funds them to start their own businesses. So, we
are actually part of the process in empowering them to start their
businesses. Once you train them well enough and they are able to carry
out the particular trade they are trained in, other government
organisations come in to fund them.
We are also looking at working with
recruitment agencies to find out what their clients are looking to make
sure we are training the right people to fill those gaps. Our survey
with UNIDO is based on that – to make sure that trainees are not
redundant after their training so it won’t be training for training
sake. There are key sectors the government is targeting and we need to
train the right manpower to fill those sectors.
We want our people to be able to compete
favourably with other people in their industries in other parts of the
world. We are also working to sponsor some of our trainees to the World
Skills Olympics in August; that will help to showcase the country as an
investment destination. We are benchmarking our best practices so that
people can come here and invest. We are also reviewing the curriculum to
make sure we are teaching current skills.
Are there plans for
legislation to keep your trainees back in the country to contribute to
the economy before they move to other countries?
We have about 69 million youths in
Nigeria and the workforce is made up of youths. We have about the ninth
largest population of youths in the world, which is huge. Looking at
that, even if we train all of them, they cannot all be gainfully
employed in this country; we don’t have enough industries to take them
in. There are other foreigners coming in to take up jobs here; so, why
can’t we also send out our people to take up jobs in other countries?
Ghana just struck oil, and there will be jobs in that sector. Why can’t
we export our workers there? There is Sao Tome and Principe, majority of
the people working there are Nigerians. I believe that wherever skills
are needed, people should go there.
We have people queuing at the embassies
to go outside the country and work. We don’t want them to go there and
wash plates; let them come for training and be equipped with the
relevant skills before they move out so they can get the right jobs
there. They will earn the money and bring it back to our country. That
doesn’t mean the industries here will suffer; we have enough manpower;
all we need is to empower people. If we train enough, we will have
enough to fill the West Coast; that is our conviction.
What is the current status of the Students’ Industrial Work Experience Scheme?
The issue of SIWES is beyond the ITF. It
is funded by the Federal Government. We can only work with the amount
given to us. But for me, SIWES is something that shouldn’t just be three
months; it is something the students should have and still go back to
the classroom. I am told it attracts six per cent credit which is good
but we can do better. It can run side by side with their studies. Since
the government is involved with the transformation agenda, I think we
have to work harder and review our training programmes. In addressing
the SIWES, all stakeholders need to work together to let the government
know why it should be reviewed. There is a lot to be done with regard to
SIWES but I think this six per cent credit can be improved.
How do you recruit people who want to acquire skills?
We work with stakeholders such as the
Nigeria Employers’ Consultative Association and others; we also work
with state and local governments. We source for people who require
training on our own.
On the average, what does it cost to fund these trainings?
We are to train about 1,000 people per
state in the programmes, and to train a person, it costs about N50,000
on the average exclusive of the cost of equipment. When you multiply
that by 36 states, you know how much that will be. There are also other
programmes that are more capital intensive.
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