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Tag: skills development

  • OSSAP-TVEE, labour and employment ministry sign MoU on skills development

    OSSAP-TVEE, labour and employment ministry sign MoU on skills development

    The Office of the Special Assistant to the President on Technical, Vocational and Entrepreneurship Education (OSSAP-TVEE) Friday signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Ministry of Labour and Employment on the development of skills among youths in the country.

    The ceremony, which took place at the office of the Minister of Labour and Employment, Hon. Nkeiruka Chidubem Onyejeocha, was witnessed by the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry, Mr. Ismaila Abubakar, directors of the Ministry as well as the OSSAP-TVEE Team’

    In her brief remarks before the signing ceremony, the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Technical, Vocational and Entrepreneurship Education, Madam Abiola Arogundade, expressed delight at the signing of the agreement describing it as a milestone in the collaborative development and upscaling of skills in Nigeria.

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    Madam Arogundade, who noted that the percentage of the high-skilled labour in the country currently is at the abysmal low of 15 percent, added that her office is currently engaged in  conducting  a skills mapping survey across the 36 states of the Federation to identify relevant skills required in the Job Market, 

    She also pointed out that her office is in collaboration with the TETFUND and the National Bureau on Technical Education (NBTE) both to ensure adequate funding support for its programmes and the Certification of Vocational Skills beneficiaries for proper job placement, among other programmes currently being executed by the office.

    Article 3 of the MoU, requires the two bodies to collaborate to achieve an effective and efficient implementation of the President’s 8 point Agenda with respect to Job Creation by creating a descent and sustainable jobs per year to Nigerians, particularly the Youths and to work together to achieve the goals of Labour Employment and Empowerment Programme (LEEP).

    This, according to the Article, include the creation of 2.5 million jobs annually especially in the area of vocational and entrepreneurship skills, collaborate among themselves on planning, execution and evaluation of LEEP by ensuring the effective utilization of the resources and expertise and to coordinate regular meetings and progress reports that will be scheduled to assess the achievements and challenges of the programme.

    While Article 5 of the MoU also confers on the OSSAP-TVEE the responsibility of  conducting  a skills mapping survey to identify relevant skills required in the Job Market, the Offices agrees to develop a comprehensive curriculum aligned with the identified skills and to oversee the certification process as contained in Article 4  subsection 2 of the MoU.

  • ‘Skills development’ll drive local content in oil, gas sector’

    Investing in training facilities, Research and Development (R&D) will help enhance the capacity of indigenous operators in the oil and gas industry thereby deepening the local content initiative, the Executive Director, Lagos Deep Offshore Logistics Base (LADOL), Mr Jide Jadesimi, has said.

    He said there was the need to enhance the capacities of local businesses and operators in the nation’s oil and gas industry in order to execute major projects in the extractive industry.

    Jadesimi spoke to The Nation ahead of the “3rd Africa local Content & Sustainability Summit” scheduled to hold in Ghana in October. He said increasing local content by expanding the opportunities for indigenous enterprises and communities to participate in the extractive industry’s value chain required up-skilling national workforces to increase their competitiveness.

    The LADOL director said this could be done through partnerships, joint ventures and/or other alliances between local businesses and mining companies to enable indigenous companies broaden their knowledge of the extractive industry and promote technology and skills transfer.

    He added that a multi-sectoral approach was critical to skills development so that competencies gained can be transferred to other economic sectors.

    According to him, such approach will also help indigenous businesses access market information on opportunities in the extractive sector and build their capacity over time to effectively participate in and link with mining, oil and gas companies.

    Jadesimi stated that without the necessary capacities, indigenous oil and gas firms will continue to miss out on available opportunities.

    “Substantial benefits can be realised from close collaborations with companies, hence the importance of facilitating alliances between local and foreign businesses,” he said.

    The LADOL boss added that the participation of the private sector and civil society will also be critical to raising community awareness and building the capacity of local enterprises to take advantage of emerging opportunities in the industry.

    He further stated that investing in skills development through training is not just about driving local content, but doing business sustainably, profitably and responsibly. “It can lower supply chain costs by creating jobs and prosperity for local communities and using local suppliers, goods and services,” he added.

    While insisting that local content matters a great deal, Jadesimi said businesses must comply with a country’s local content laws to be able to operate.Secondly, investing in skills, sourcing locally and building capacity in the short-term, he said, means businesses can operate more efficiently and profitably in the long-term.

    He also said companies will strengthen their brand and protect their long-term licence to operate by contributing to the development of the host country. Jadesimi said for local content to be sustainable, a long-term, end-to-end localisation approach must be followed from exploration through to decommissioning phases in the typical oil and gas lifecycle.

    “To become more competitive to international mining firms, governments must seek to create a more investor-friendly business environment. But these actions should not override the reasonable consideration of retaining as large a proportion of resource wealth as possible in-country,” he said.

  • Collaboration key to skills development,says ITF chief

    The Director-General, Industrial Training Fund (ITF), Sir Joseph Ari, has said local and international collaboration is critical to accomplishing the goals of the agency.

    According to him, the Fund has established training linkages with external agencies, such as the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR), the N-Power Knowledge, Niger Delta University (NDU), National Institute for Mining and Geosciences and Cement Technology Institute of Nigeria (CTIN).

    He said the current management of the agency would return the organisation to the path of growth, saying that, in the last two years, the agency has trained over 60,000 from 2,300 organisations and over 50,000 youths.

    Other vulnerable groups were also equipped with skills for employability and entrepreneurship through programmes, such as the National Industrial Skills Development Programme (NISDP), the Women Skills Empowerment Programme (WOSEP), Training on Wheels and the Technical Skills Development Project (TSDP), among other initiatives.

    Ari said about 150,000 Nigerians had benefited from ITF training programmes since the assumption of the current management.

    He said: “ITF has implemented numerous technical skills acquisition programmes as well as introduced new initiatives including the National Industrial Skills development Programme (NISDP), the Women Skills Empowerment Programne (WOSEP) and the Skills Development Programme for Youths in Construction Trade (CONSEP) among several others.

    “The NISDP, our flagship technical vocational skills acquisition programme, which was run twice in 2016, has trained about 30,000 youths drawn from the 36 states of the federation and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) between late 2016 to date.”

    Ari said the agency has collaborated with organisations both locally and internationally for training and technical assistance.

    According to him, the fund established training linkages with external agencies like United Nation’s Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR), the N-Power Knowledge, Niger Delta University (NDU), National Institute for Mining and Geosciences and Cement Technology Institute of Nigeria (CTIN) amongst others.

    On the Students Industrial Work Experience Scheme (SIWES), he said: “The Students Industrial Work Experience Scheme is a brain child of the ITF. It was initiated to provide students of engineering, technical and allied disciplines, with practical experience of the real work situations they were likely to find on graduation.

    “The ITF disbursed a total of N1.6billion as students and supervisory allowances to 328 tertiary institutions.

    “As part of efforts to improve the scheme, the ITF stepped up engagements with the supervising agencies and other stakeholders to address some of the problems bedeviling the scheme.

    “To this end, it convened the 13th SIWES Biennial Conference and the SIWES stakeholders meeting. All the events took place in Abuja and attracted the participation of all the regulatory agencies, the Federal Ministries of Education; Industry, Trade and Investment; Labour and Productivity and employers of labour.

     

     

  • ‘Skills development among youths ’ll promote job creation’

    Consumers Protection Council (CPC) Director-General Mr Babatunde Irukera has stressed the need to train youths in specialised skills.

    He said this would accelerate job creation and reduce skills gap through the mobilisation of investments between the public and private sectors.

    Speaking during the maiden edition of the Progressive Minds Forum (PMF) in Lagos, he advised youths to refrain from cyber crimes and deploy their creative energy to productive ventures.

    “Never in our history were fraud or any form of criminal activity celebrated as they are being daily celebrated today.

    “It is no longer a secret that the preponderance of Nigerian youths think that the quickest and easiest route to wealth is the infamous ‘yahoo yahoo’,” Irukera added.

    The CPC chief urged the youth  to explore their talents in the best possible ways they could rather than blaming all the problems on the environment.

    He said the forum, comprising a group of professionals, discovered that the myriad challenges facing the country began with negative mindsets that people had from young age.

    He called on youths to develop their talents for the benefit of the society positively.

    He said a country’s approach to innovations and creativity would determine how far it could grow, adding that the right mindset to such growth was to think through the nation’s talents.

    PMF Chief Coordinator, Mrs Omotayo Gbajabiamila-Olamona said  the country would get quality delivery from youths when they were prodded in the right direction.

    Gbajabiamila-Olamona said investment in infrastructure, without same in human capacity, would not make the country to get expected successful result.

  • Fed Govt seeks support for skills development

    The Minister of Labour and Employment, Senator Chris Ngige, has urged the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) to support the Federal Government’s vocational skills acquisition programme and promote the trade test certificate issued by the ministry for skills export.

    The minister spoke when he hosted IOM’s Chief of Mission, Ms Enira Krdzalic, who was on a courtesy visit to Nigeria. The minister observed that many skilled youths took the part of irregular migration with its attendant danger due to lack of information.

    He called on IOM to do more in the area of advocacy, publicity and sensitisation through the newly established Migrant Resource Centre under the 10th European Union Development Project.

    “Irregular migration is one of the worst problems because some of these migrants have skills and vocations that can put them on the part of regular migration, but because of the absence of information and knowledge they veer off and undertake the part of irregular migration, which has caused them a lot of hazards,” he said.

    Ngige said the ministry’s partnership with IOM will afford skilled Nigerians the opportunity to work abroad as regular migrants with relevant documents thereby reducing the spate of irregular migration and the danger it posed to the youths.

    Earlier in her remarks, Ms Krdzalic said her organisation is partnering the Ministry of Labour and Employment to promote gainful employment opportunities as government alone cannot generate all the needed jobs.