What FG is doing to empower Nigerians –Ari, DG, ITF

From Gyang Bere, Jos

The Director General of Industrial Training Fund (ITF), Sir Joseph Ari has said the fund has unveiled a strategic policy direction plan to address the soaring number of 90 million people living in poverty and 23 million people who cannot find jobs through skills acquisition. He said ITF is working tirelessly to turn the huge population of Nigeria into skilled population to the advantage of the country.

How has ITF policy direction impacted positively on Nigeria economy?

Like I have said, the effort that we have done will not be sufficient because of our huge population; that is why we are calling on all other stakeholders to join forces with us. It is during the review of our programmes and plans that we saw the need to change to the institutionalization of the apprenticeship and traineeship system, that is what is obtained everywhere and we have indigenous set up of apprenticeship already. If you go to the Igbo culture, they are already used to apprenticeship where somebody stayed with his master; he gets better and now know the job and set up his own and start selling on his own and keep translating like that by expanding. This is the enhanced level of apprenticeship globally and I give you example of Germany. Our first National Skills Summit was in 2020 in Abuja, we couldn’t do last year because of COVID-19 and we had that of 2022 last week in Abuja and we were specific on the theme because we knew that will be what will form the basis of our plan. The summit was on apprenticeship and we brought all the stakeholders on board, we realized that they needed to join force with us so that we can escalate our presence of skills. In the population, that is what we have done. When you talk about success and impact, it is there but it will be like a drop in the ocean because the population is huge and you know training a country is not training a company. We need more hands on deck, that is why we are advocating other stakeholders to join force so that we can address and handle the huge population of our country.

Do you think our huge population is a problem?

No, the population of our country is a competitive advantage to Nigeria. If you go to other climes of the world, they are dealing with unskilled population, so if we have skilled population, they will just move to other parts of the world and they will earn direct foreign investment for this country. It is good when your population is skilled, so if you just move people to other parts of the world who are unskilled, we are going to have more problems on our hands; that is why we are faced with all these challenges of restiveness, kidnapping, armed banditry, robbery including human trafficking and prostitution. We need more stakeholders to join force with us at the ITF because most Nigerians are looking for government jobs; the jobs are not available, this is the only way out. Today, skills are regarded as the currency of the 21st century.

You presented an Android phone to President Muhammadu Buhari manufactured recently by the ITF and you promised to carry out mass production for Nigerians to start using, how far have you gone?

As we speak, I was able to inspect the assembly plant, the line has been installed in our morden skills centre in Abuja, because we needed to widen the capacity of the machine and they have now been installed. We needed to work with other regulatory agencies and we have worked with NITDA , NCC with other agencies to draw the legal framework. We are almost at the concluding end now; the main thing is to have the machines and the equipment installed which are on ground. We need to work on the legal framework for the purpose of intellectual property rights. From June 2021 to now, a private company in Lagos Afri one has also approached to partner with us in area of capacity building and we have already signed an MoU with them. Afri one is an Indian company in Lagos; they have seen the effort we have made and they are satisfied and willing to partner with us on capacity building. This will enable us have a pool of experts to be able to produce the Android phones. I think what should occupy the minds of Nigerians is to ensure that we put the legal framework in proper perspective because the production will be an easy task when the legal framework is carried out properly.

How important is your strategic policy direction for 2022-2025 is in addressing poverty and unemployment in Nigeria?

Yes, this strategic policy direction is the third of such plans by the incumbent administration in the Industrial Training Fund (ITF). On my assumption of office in 2016, we unveiled the ITF Reviewed Vision: Strategies for Mandate Actualization, the plan was initially slated to terminate in 2022 but was reviewed in 2020 to address gaps that were identified in the course of its implementation, and for us to appropriately respond to the negative impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on our numerous client. The plan enabled us to aggressively address service challenges by computerizing our operations, tackling infrastructural challenges to expand access to Nigerians desirous of acquiring skills, and generally address a gamut of other strictures that were impinging on our ability to effectively discharge our mandate for National economic growth and development and the general good of the Nigerian people. 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 bedevilling us as a Nation. You are aware that unemployment in Nigeria today is at over 33 per cent as over 23 million Nigerians that are desirous to work cannot find jobs, 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. 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.

Do you think government has done enough to address the myriad of challenges confronting the country?

Government is making effort, the federal government and, governments at all levels have taken measures to tackle these challenges, but it has become increasingly obvious that the efforts have to be redoubled by all and sundry for us to effectively rid the country of these challenges. This informed 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. We have considered the need to scale up our activities to address 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. The new policy framework, has its theme: Re-Engineering Skills for Sustainable Development and 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. We believe that the new Policy framework if fully implemented will place us in better stead to fully implement our mandate and drive the achievement of Federal Government’s goals with particular reference to unemployment, poverty and their associated consequences. We believe that countries all over the world that had dealt with and have successfully solved the problems that we are currently confronting today, did it through a greater commitment to skills acquisition.