The National Board for Technical Education (NBTE) has urged vocational and technical based higher institutions of learning to embrace the Nigerian Skills Qualification Framework (NSQF) in addressing manpower skills gap.
The NSQF is a system that affords the informal vocational centres the opportunity to have their unskilled artisans trained at various vocational training institutions without requisite credentials of learning for admission.
The Executive Secretary NBTE, Prof. Idris Bugaje, made the call at a one day sensitisation workshop on NSQF in Kano.
Bugaje said the purpose of the project was to re-engineer the technical vocational sector, especially the technical vocational colleges abandoned for a long time, and to bring infrastructure intervention aimed at providing more jobs.
He said that the board was working assiduously in ensuring that every polytechnic in the country ran certified skills training under NSQF.
He stressed that each polytechnic should look at its environment and institute a skills training that would fit into the environment .
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The executive secretary added that institutions in Lagos had gone far in terms of implementation of the framework, hence the need for them to take drastic measures towards bridging the gap.
“The future of this nation lies on skills; it provides employment, export of skills labour and many more would be generated if skills labour was well provided in the country.
“In a popular scrap market in Kaduna named Panteka, 38,000 artisans were undergoing various skills training.
He said NBTE had collaborated with the Panteka Market management in the aspect of training artisans so that they would be issued with certificates that would be recognised globally,” he said.
The NBTE boss said the system was aimed to award artisans without formal education a recognised academic certificate, adding that such policy would add value to the nation’s economy.
According to him, the NSQF is a work based award, designed to measure competence in a professional role entailing the proving of capability to carry a particular job to the required standard.
He charged the participants to pay attention to the various presentations, to enable them to step down the knowledge gained to other colleagues for the successful implementation of the framework.
Some of the participants who spoke to our correspondent commended the Federal Government for the opportunity and promised to share the knowledge with others.
Our correspondent reports that more than 100 people participated at the sensitisation workshop.
