From Yakubu Busari,Jos
Director -General /Chief Executive of the Industrial Training Fund ITF, Sir Joseph Ari, officials during the press briefing in Jos on Monday
The Director -General /Chief Executive of the Industrial Training Fund ITF, Sir Joseph Ari, has decried the soaring poverty and rising rate of unemployment currently at 33 per cent with 23 million Nigerians “who are desirous to work cannot find jobs owning to absence requisite skills.”
Ari made this disclosure at a media briefing on the ITF strategic policy direction in 2022-2025 on Monday at the ITF centre for excellence auditorium, Jos.
He pointed out that 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.
According to him: “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 in 2023.”
Happing on the need to fully acquaint the public with ITF plans, he said the Strategic Policy Direction was the third of such plans by the incumbent administration in the Industrial Training Fund (ITF) as a follow-up to the 2016 plan his administration unveiled on assumption of office, titled Strategies for Mandate Actualization.
He explained further that the plan, which was initially slated to terminate in 2022, was, however, reviewed in 2020 to address gaps that were identified in the course of its implementation to appropriately respond to the negative impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on our numerous clients.
Ari maintained that ,despite the numerous achievements recorded by the “Fund on account of these initiatives, we have realized that more needs to be done if we must fully tackle the numerous socio-economic problems that are bedeviling us as a Nation.”
He stressed that , “given the nature of your profession, you should be acutely aware that unemployment in Nigeria today, 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 .
“It is based on the above and in line with our mandate of developing a vast pool of skilled manpower sufficient to meet the needs of the public and private sectors of the national economy coupled with resolutions at the recently concluded ITF National Skills Summit in Abuja that we found it imperative to review and refocus our strategies to address the above challenges and to meet the skills requirement of the nation in line with global best practices “.
“In arriving at our strategies, we considered the need to scale up our activities to address the soaring unemployment and other socio-economic challenges by leveraging on our three Es (Experience, Expertise and Expansive network), deployment of technology for wider coverage and more flexible service delivery.
DG ITF ,explained that the new policy framework, which has as its theme: Re-Engineering Skills for Sustainable Development, has external and internal components. The internal components of the plan, which entail value reorientation, Industrial Development, Commercialization of ITF Facilities, Alternative Funding Window, Deployment and Promotion, Annual Budget Preparation and, Revenue Generation are intended to drive the external components of the new policy direction, which covers Standardization and Certification, Technical and Vocational Skills Training Programmes, Skills Intervention Programmes, Electronic and Virtual Learning and, Optimal Utilization of Skills Training Centres (STCs) and Vocational Wings (VWs).
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. In this regard and given the role the media plays in education, enlightenment and opinion moulding of the citizenry, I will appeal to you to use the vast instruments available to you to take home this message to every Nigerian.
