Prince Adetokunbo Kayode, the President, Abuja Chamber of Commerce and Industry (ACCI) has advised Federal Government to implement National ICT Skill Policy for fresh graduates to reduce unemployment rate.
Kayode gave the advice at the launch of Vocational and Skills Training for 120 graduates on Monday in Abuja.
He said that the Federal Government should make it a mandatory policy for graduates to be trained in different vocational skills that could create jobs for them.
He added that “the National Skill Policy can be made compulsory for fresh Nigerian graduates to acquire knowledge that would make them self employed, instead of waiting for government jobs.
“Every government wants to create employment but government cannot create jobs for all but can create enabling environment that will allow people to generate jobs.”
The chamber president said that the ongoing vocational training for 120 graduates was to teach them different Information Communication
Technology (ICT) skills that could create jobs and promote sustainable development.
He noted that “when I took over as the 10th president of ACCI in January, I made it clear that we would not rest on our oars until majority of Nigerian youths acquired 21st century skills.
“Skill that would make them to proudly step into leadership positions within the shortest possible time.
“We are now set for the commencement of a mass vocational training for Nigerian youths through the Abuja Chamber of Commerce and Industry (ACCI) in conjunction with the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ).”
Kayode said that the training would cover areas such as ICT, web design, graphics design, web management, IT support, systems administration and photography.
He exphasised that “these skills would have ordinarily cost reasonable amount of money to acquire but we succeeded in bringing it to the youths at almost zero encumbrance, that was why we appreciate the partnership with GIZ.”
He said that the training, which was the first edition, would be extended nationwide through an organised private sector.
“We are going to create Uber platform for trainees where their services will be required or get jobs.
” We are not only training them but we will mentor them and also use organised private sector to help them to secure Federal Government Small Medium Entrepreneurial (SME) funds.”
The training was coordinated by the Abuja Chamber of Commerce and Industry (ACCI) training arm known as Business Entrepreneurship Skills and Technology.
The programme is tagged #BEST1000, meaning 1000 fresh graduates ranging from age 16 to 30 years would be trained every year for four years.
Prof. Adesoji Adesugba, Founder and President of Business Entrepreneurship Skills and Technology Centre, said that the programme was
advertised online whereby 3000 graduates responded.
He said “we set up criteria to select 120 graduates from the 3000 respondents and they will be trained for six weeks, after which another set will be selected.”
Mr Hans-Ludwig Bruns, the Cluster Coordinator, Sustainable Economic Development, said that one of the objectives of the programme was to have 30 to 40 female participants in the programme.
“We are looking at skills that women can participate during this six weeks programme such as agriculture and technical education and hospitality,” he added.
