Skill acquisition crucial to employment opportunities, says educationist

The Principal, Federal Science and Technical College, Yaba, Dr Ogochukwu Ufoegbune has announced plans to introduce short courses on skills acquisition for old students and other interested persons.

Ufoegbune who disclosed this in an interview on the sideline of the institution’s 10th annual Speech and Prize Giving ceremony said the short courses would be designed to last for three to six months.She explained that the need to produce young people who are well equipped with modern skills that will meet the 21st century need informed the initiative.

“We all know that technology is the way to go. Today’s economy worldwide is technology driven and therefore, we cannot afford to be left behind as a country. So for us in this college, part of the mandate is to nurture and graduate students who are well trained and capable of establishing the skills they have acquired.

“It is expected that our technical students on graduation must acquire all the skills they are supposed to acquire to become self employed and if possible, employers of labour. That is why we are actually planning to take it further by introducing short skills acquisition courses where even our past students, as well as students from other schools who have gone beyond secondary schools, can come in here for a period of three to six months and acquire skills that will enable them set up small scale businesses that will not require so much money to set up,” she said.She however called on the Federal government to further intensify efforts in upgrading the various workshops in the college, adding that most of the equipment are non- functional and obsolete.

According to her, the college is expecting government intervention in the area of equipment in order to realise teaching and learning objectives.“We are expecting more intervention from government in this regard. Our staff strength, though not adequate especially in the technical aspect, needs to be improved upon. We indeed need more technical teachers. The Federal Ministry of Education has also started to address this too by sending about 25 teachers to the school. It is however an ongoing exercise because recently, the ministry recruited about 800 teachers that were spread across the 104 Unity Colleges in the country.“We believe that once all these challenges are taken care of, the country will be better for it, especially in the area of production of manpower,” she added.