BY: ZAINAB KAKA ABUBAKAR, KANO
President Bola Ahmed Tinubu will on Tuesday declare open a Three Day National Conference that would address poverty, unemployment and skills’ gap in Nigeria.
The conference is designed by the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC Think Tank and intellectual resource center, The Progressive Institute, TPI.
Themed: Vocational Skills Acquisition, Entrepreneurship and Challenges of Development in Nigeria, the conference is scheduled to hold from Tuesday, 17th to Thursday 19th December, 2024 at The Banquet Hall of The Presidential Villa in Abuja.
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The Chief host of the conference and APC National Chairman, Dr. Abdullahi Umar Ganduje said the conference is an intervention by the APC Leadership to contribute to the efforts of the Federal Government towards addressing the challenges of youths unemployment as well as the current gaps between many University degrees and work place requirements.
“TPI will assemble a team of Experts and practitioners to undertake empirical and clinical appraisals of the current challenges and proffer creative and imaginative solutions which will be forwarded to the Federal Government for consideration and implementation”.
Dr. Lanre Adebayo, Director General, DG of TPI noted that the event is a policy- driven Conference with the aim of addressing advanced skills sector such as Advanced Construction Technologies, Digital Technologies, Technical skills in Mining, Maritime, Advanced Welding Certifications, Skills in Sustainable development and Climate Change Agriculture (including value chain processing, agro-preneurship) etc.
The DG said the Conference will undertake a comparative and historical analyses of the experiences of countries such as Singapore, Philippines, Malaysia which built their economies on related advanced vocational skills.
“Foreign and Nigerian based groups have been invited to deliver position papers on these areas. And some of them from Britain and China have offered to raise funds for a proposed Zonal Skills Acquisition Centers”
Dr. Adebayo added that there are middle level as well as low level vocational skills which will also feature at the programme. He said the essence is to shortlist these skills especially in the context of their relevance to each of the Country’s six geo-political areas.
He added that conference seeks a review of the extant Nigerian educational curriculum with a view to examining how to restore and strengthen the vocational content.
“It will also examine how to further utilize the cooperative model in organizing small and medium scale enterprises into powerful economic units especially to create wealth on sustainable basis”
It promises to be expository as Small and Medium Scale Enterprises (SMEDAN), Nigerian Chamber of Commerce, Bank of Industry, Federal Ministry of Science and Technology, Federal Ministry of Youth Development, Federal Ministry of Women Affairs and other government and non-governmentmental organizations, NGO have been invited to contribute to the conference.