Many people have blamed the high unemployment rate in Nigeria partly on lack of necessary skills by graduates of tertiary institutions, especially for the industry sector. To forestall this development and ensure that students are gainfully employed upon graduation, the Arc. Sonny Echono-led Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) initiated various programmes and activities that would help to bridge the knowledge gaps in both staffers and students.

One of such programmes include capacity building programmes for staff of different units in benefiting tertiary institutions. It is worthy of mention that Echono has aggressively sustained capacity building programmes for both scholars and non-academic staff of Nigerian tertiary institutions since he assumed office.

Recently, a two-day Implementation Support Workshop for the National Employability programme was held at the Fund’s Headquarters in Abuja for university staff. The aim was to further enhance their skills and knowledge base in the areas of skills and innovations. Since no one gives what he does not have, the Fund believes that repositioning the staff through skills acquisition training would equip them efficiently to impact students with such knowledge and develop their capabilities, not only to find jobs after graduation but also to be able to sustain meaningful employment.

The programme followed recommendations contained in the report of the National Employability Benchmarking Exercise, which was submitted to the Fund by the International Finance Corporation (IFC).

Echono stated that the workshop was designed to boost the knowledge of career officers of benefitting institutions, who had no career services units and also lacked basic skills to set up such units.

To achieve desired results in this area within a short period, the TETFund Executive Secretary disclosed that the Fund was in the process of establishing entrepreneurship and innovation hubs in benefitting institutions across the six geo-political zones of the country. He noted that the idea is to link them with industries with a view to enhancing entrepreneurship development, innovation and employability in line with contemporary global best practices.

These interventions, the TETFund boss said, would help promote the transformation of the institutions into catalysts for knowledge creation and also help in translating knowledge into usable products and services for addressing societal problems.

Echono’s efforts and commitment since he assumed the leadership of the Fund last year has been geared towards facilitating necessary links between research, development and innovations in tertiary institutions. He believes that once this is achieved, entrepreneurship development would be promoted and graduates would be employable.

Echono’s vision and set goal is to witness Nigerian tertiary institutions that serve as facilitators for national and regional economic development by unlocking the knowledge potential to solve critical societal challenges.

The Report of the Employability Benchmarking Exercise covered the five dimensions of employability – Relevance of Learning, Governance and Strategy, Employer Engagement, Career Services/Guidance and Alumni Management.

Echono said at the workshop: “The Report indicates that the aggregate average score of Nigerian benchmark institutions across the five dimensions of employability is 2.3 out of 4.0 which is just above the average of all institutions benchmarked globally (2.2).

“The report, which also covers the assessment of the institutions’ Digital Learning Strategy shows that surveyed universities lagged behind in global best practices in application of digital learning strategies, access to large multidisciplinary database and digital course-reserves as well as the level of faculty digital skills. This obviously requires deliberate action on the part of all stakeholders to address our peculiar challenges.”

At the opening ceremony of the two-day workshop was also the head of Global Lead, Education and Employability Advisory, Manufacturing, Agribusiness and Services Department, IFC, Dina Nicholas.

She revealed that the reason they chose to monitor the data was not only to know the number of graduates but also to actually improve the programmes to understand which of them was producing qualified and employable graduates and which programme may need further support towards the employability of students.

She pleaded that the report should not be left unused. Rather, university authorities should take steps to improve on programmes that may appear problematic in placing their students in jobs.

The Managing Director, Cognitive Advisory, Mr. Tope Toogun, was also at the programme. He stated that in the past 10 years, various attempts and researches have been carried out towards curbing graduate unemployment in the country. He, however, decried that the moves were not followed with commensurate actions towards implementing the findings. However, with experts in attendance, he was hopeful that lasting solutions to graduate unemployment was just around the corner.