Nigeria is actively nurturing a new generation of skilled young people to address the nation’s workforce challenges and meet global demands, Minister of Education, Dr. Tunji Alausa, has said.
He clarified that exporting Nigerian skills is a deliberate strategy to showcase the country’s talent and strengthen its global competitiveness, rather than a sign of brain drain.
Speaking when he received a delegation from the Chambers led by the Chief Executive Officer, Dr. Matthias Leder, Alausa assured that the Ministry will collaborate with the Giessen-Friedberg Chamber of Commerce in Germany to harness the skills of Nigerian TVET graduates to help fill the skilled manpower gap in Germany.
The Minister said the Federal Government has revitalised all technical colleges to equip young Nigerians with practical skills that meet the nation’s technical manpower needs and position them for global opportunities.
“We will now work to set up a technical working group to begin to draft the MoU with you and we will feed these students in our technical school to the pathway. We will do it in such a way that you will also come in for the assessment of these students while they are in school and even the ones we have trained.
“The ones that your chamber deems fit to travel, we will follow through the processes that we will put in place up to getting training visas from the German embassy,” he said.
Responding to Dr. Leder’s remarks on legal labour migration, Dr. Alausa explained that the first cohort of 250,000 participants under the Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) programme has commenced training, with a target to train one million young Nigerians.
He stated that the government is currently implementing the Dual Mandate Training programme free of charge in all technical colleges and has identified industries where participants will undergo “Student Field Training” to acquire both theoretical knowledge and practical skills.
“When we met last year November, we learnt from what you said about this Dual Mandate Training and I am happy to report to you that we have implemented that in all our technical colleges. The Federal Government has announced that going to our technical colleges is going to be free. We are paying everything so it’s free, and we have seen the surge of enrolment in our technical colleges has gone up by 400%, and we are going to continue this and increase more enrolment,” he stated.
The Minister said the government has also mobilised funding from the World Bank to build workshops in all the federal technical colleges as well as some state technical colleges.
He commended the Giessen-Friedberg Chamber of Commerce of Germany for promoting Dual Vocational Training in Nigeria in partnership with the Nigerian Association of Chambers of Commerce, Industry, Mines and Agriculture and other Chambers of Commerce and said the government needs to take ownership of the programme to ensure sustainability.
In his remarks, Dr. Leder said that between 2012 and 2018, 600 trainers and trainees were supported by the Chamber of Commerce and Industry Giessen-Friedberg with vocational training in partnership with the Abuja Chamber of Commerce and Industry (ACCI), Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI), Ogun State Council of Chambers of Commerce Industry, Mines and Agriculture (OCUNCCIMA), Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN) and the Nigerian-German Business Association (NGBA).
According to Dr. Leder, Dual Vocational Training provides the easiest solution to skills acquisition with a view to solving some of the most complex challenges in industrial growth.
He said the Chamber has selected 18 Nigerians through a rigorous competitive process to begin learning the German language, after which they will be deployed to industries in Germany to undertake a three-year Dual Vocational Training programme.
“There are a lot of Nigerians willing to pay thousands of dollars to migrate illegally, but it’s much cheaper to migrate legally,” he said.
He commended former Minister of Information and Culture and the Managing Partner of Bruit Costaud, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, who led the delegation, for supporting the chamber to deepen their partnerships in Nigeria.
Other members of the delegation are Marina França Leder, wife of the CEO; Tim Müller, Deputy Director, Foreign Trade; Norbert Noisser, Senior Advisor Africa/China; and Dr. Kristen Albrecht, Head of Competence Centre Africa.
