Chukkas-Onaeko
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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