SkillUp TVET Academy graduates students in vocational training

SkillUp Academy Lagos, has graduated 113 students in various vocational and technical fields, which it believes are primed to live their dreams of becoming competent enterprise builders and wealth creators.

Speaking at a ceremony in their honour and the launching of SkillUp Innovation and Incubation Centre (SIIC) in Lagos Tuesday, former Lagos State governor, Babatunde Raji Fashola, said that the training has provided the youths with the skills that the environment requires.

Fashola, now a ministerial nominee, who was represented by erstwhile Commissioner for Commerce and Industry in the state, Mrs. Sola Oworu, said that rather than have graduates embark on endless search for unavailable jobs, the skills that the graduands have acquired from the training will better place them as employers of labour rather than job-seekers.

Managing director of the outfit, Afolabi Imoukhuede, while commending the graduands for their successful sojourn expressed hope that the institute would continue to grow from strength to strength and churn out more graduates.

Imoukhuede who lamented that some of the students could not sponsor themselves for the training, appealed to public-spirited individuals to come to the aid of the needy students, as they require money for their studies.

Affiliated to the City and Guilds, London, the managing director assured the graduands that the City and Guilds certificate, which they will acquire at the end of the study would put them in good stead to fight for international jobs.

Citing example of the 15-year-old best graduating student in carpentry and furniture-making, the managing director said the skills academy was out to change the status quo of training from “content-driven to “competency-driven, adding that the institution was deliberate in its strategy and determined to prove that a sustainable TVET market system was possible in Nigeria.

While advising the country to build an economy that prides on the skills of young people, she, however, urged the graduands not to feel inferior to any of their peers outside the vocational line, as according to her, “those who produce nothing cannot question your contribution to nation-building.”

The best graduating student, Mr. Eric Ogbugo, while thanking the academy for the gesture, attributed his success to hard work and dedication to study.