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From Gyang Bere, Jos
Director General of Industrial Training Fund (ITF), Joseph N. Ari has said the Fund has put in place a mechanism to ensure President Muhammadu Buhari actualises his dream of creating 100 million jobs. In this interview, he spoke on various issues.
Unemployment is one of the challenges ravaging Nigeria, what is ITF doing to reduce unemployment and poverty in the country?
In the face of soaring unemployment and the growing number of the poor, nations all over the world have resorted to skills acquisition and they use it as a vehicle in equipping their citizens with competitive skills for Entrepreneurship and employability. This is because from over 36 intervention programmes we have carried out, we have discovered that one intervention programme gives birth to both direct and indirect jobs and place alongside the near impossibility of acquiring or getting employment, skills acquisition becomes a ready answer to absence of white collar jobs. You provide jobs to a person, he sets up on his own and he becomes an employer of labour by bringing in people who are categorized as indirect jobs and they stand on their own and become the greatest employer of SME sector. We feel that the way unemployment has risen, we need all hands on desk, all the agencies of government, both the government and private to come together to institutionalise Technical Vocational Education and Training (TVET) in our lives so that unemployment can be reduced as it cannot be totally checked given the booming population of our country. Looking at the birth rate in Nigeria according to statistics given by NBS, the population of Nigeria was soaring by the day. The population is 65 percent between the ages of 13 and 35, these are youths; if put to practical and proper use, these youths will be able to move to the rest of the world, provide skills to the rest of the world and earn direct foreign investment for Nigeria. Leaving them without skills, without hand on matter, will create a lot of vices for our country, vices from restiveness, to kidnapping, to banditry, to prostitution and to all kind of vices that face Nigeria squarely today. We need therefore, to address unemployment through acquisition of skills and for me, the acquisition of skills takes centre stage on the issue of addressing the barest minimum the unfortunate saga in our polity. It is based on this that the ITF sees the skill acquisition as the universal currency of the 21 century and the most sustainable vehicle for job creation as well as poverty reduction. You can see that even in Nigeria’s planed revolution of government that has metamorphosed into economic recovery and growth plan, into Nigeria’s economic sustainability plan, into the survival fund and into so many other support services and stimulus that the Federal Government has brought in to boost the economy, everyone of them is centred on the provision of skills. We have therefore, initiated several skills acquisition programmes and through these programmes, we have been able to equip and empower hundreds of thousands of Nigerians in the last five years with requisite skills for employability, for entrepreneurship and sustainable development.
President Muhammadu Buhari has made effort to diversify the nation’s economy, how has ITF contributed towards Federal Government’s economic diversification?
The ITF has been identified as a dependable ally of the Federal Government; the economic diversification policy of the Federal Government has the input of ITF, the institution contributed in drawing up that plan. Also, the ITF is a major contributor to the economic recovery plan of the Federal Government; the ITF is a member of the National Skill Council headed by the Vice President as Chairman and at the SME council, the ITF sits even at the steering committee of the survival fund to actualise the stimulus and programme of the Federal Government; the ITF does not only sit in there as a member of chair-co but the ITF heads the subcommittee of Monitoring and Evaluation of the survival fund. You can see that the Federal Government has identified the important role of the ITF in translating its policies to concrete reality. It is as a result of that, the Vice President in 2019 gave the ITF the star partner award of the Federal Government. Also, you can see that the Federal Government has since keyed into providing skills to Nigerians; that means the Federal Government has accepted the position of ITF as the direction to go to equip Nigerians with requisite skills. For me, the ITF has really demonstrated support with the Federal Government in the consolidation and realisation of government’s policies, we will continue to play our role; we will continue to do that. It is on account of this that the Federal Government sees ITF today as a very relevant agency of government.
What are some of the challenges facing ITF?
We have three main challenges; one is the fact that the awareness about skills is not yet accepted. It has not eaten deep into the fabric of Nigerians; we need that to be done because that will indicate that ITF would have done part of its work to a large extent. Under skills awareness programme, there is a need to evolve into including it into the curriculum of Nigeria educational system, right from the kindergarten; the TVET introduction in the educational policy. The next is lack of harmonisation of skills among agencies of government as well as the private sector to come together; you will find out that most of us work across purposes; we say we are aiming towards the same goal but we are working at different purposes, we need to harmonise it and harmonising it will address some of the issues that we see today where we have agency A is working at a different level and Agency B is working at a different level and yet we say the direction is one. The last but not the least, are the issues of funds. Technical Vocational Education and Training are capital intensive. To build and equip an industrial skills training centre is in billions; we may not have the funds with the money that trickles into the organisation. In our own case, the one percent paid by the employer of labour is reimbursed by 50 percent of the one percent; so what remains to the ITF for operations and staff cost cannot meet the desire of what we will want.
Where do you think the ITF will be in the next 10 years in terms of addressing unemployment in Nigeria?
I believe that with what we have done, ITF is well grounded, and it only needs other people to come and consolidate. I will say the ITF has done considerably well in actualizing its mandate and with what we have put in place, I believe that the ITF is well positioned and prepared to take the lead in matters of human capital development in Nigeria. It is in our plan to establish an e-learning studio and developing capacity of operations of e-learning management system. Already, we have the e-library which was commissioned by the Ministry last year. We have also ventured into other training programmes that were neglected such as specialised programmes in Maritime, in oil and gas. We have within the workforce a number of staff who have been trained as well as the agricultural value chain. Fifty of our staff were in the Galilee International Management Institute in Israel; they were trained in all aspects of the agricultural value chain from crop production to manuring to storage and to even international marketing. We are doing this because Nigeria is gradually going to a zero oil economy and that means that we need to diversify into other areas and ITF is not sleeping and relaxing on it oars; it is going out to provide the needed education training to Nigerians on these values.
How is ITF contributing towards the actualization of President Muhammadu Buhari’s dream to lift 100 million Nigerians out of poverty?
Before the Federal Government came up with plans to create a hundred million jobs for hundred million Nigerians to lift them out of poverty, they (ITF) had made a submission to government on the need to create 19 million jobs and we took four sectors and brought it to the Federal Government -construction, agriculture, transport and manufacturing. We told the government that we can create 19 million jobs, so if this agency can create 19 million and other agencies do that, then you are almost getting the hundred million. This 19 million were not part of indirect jobs; this will be direct jobs created and they will create additional indirect jobs. When government sets up an economic council to look into the creation of the jobs, ITF was one of the agencies that was engaged; the council approached us and told us to give them how to arrive at the hundred million jobs; they have taken our submission, we are hoping that the government will study it and come to a conclusion that ITF will be a party to the realization to this government policy. It is a laudable policy of government and we believe that it is implementation that will reduce the unemployment situation in our country. We applaud that government policy; President Muhammadu Buhari was right to have announced it and we want to make ourselves available to be part of government efforts in the realization of that policy.
As ITF celebrate its golden Jubilee, do you think the vision for establishment of the fund has been achieved?
Each time I have an opportunity to speak, I give kudos to the forebears of the ITF, those who have built the ITF for us to consolidate on the gain. If you look at the working of the ITF, you cannot but give thanks to those our forebears. Even the internal operation, it is difficult to commit fraud here because long before the Federal Government brings the accounting system of EPSAS, the ITF has already begun its implementation. A product will go up to 25 desks here and the accounting system was introduced by white men. The founding fathers of ITF who are still alive will be nodding in appreciation for what we have done; we have consolidated on the foundation they have laid and a lot of them who are still alive call and send messages. We are happy about this development and we have not only demonstrated our loyalty to the founding fathers and Nigeria but we are contributing our quota as far as serving our father land is concerned.
