Kolade advocates review of education curriculum to address skills gap

NIM renews focus on youth empowerment

PAST President and Chairman of Council, Nigerian Institute of Management (NIM), Ambassador Christopher Kolade has advocated a review of the nation’s educational curriculum as part of efforts to address the skills gap in the country.

  Kolade, while speaking at the 2015 Business Breakfast Roundtable on youth development organized by the NIM and themed, “Youth Empowerment, Entrepreneurship and Innovation”, expressed concerns on the yawning gap between the town and gown, in the area of provision of requisite skills needed in the labour market.

    According to him, it has become imperative to know that education plays a major role in the development of the youth.

   He was also quick to add that while education remains the main way to empower the youth who are the future of the country, looking into the content of education in the country becomes paramount because the essence of education is not to be what they are taught but what they are able to get and build upon innovatively.

   He lamented the insensitivity on the content of education in the country and its direction which has not been helping the youth to make the right choices, adding that the current system whereby students would graduate and be waiting for job should give way to such youths to think of what they can do in an innovative way.

   He called on both the National and State Assemblies to wake up and co-operate with the Nigerian Institute of Management to lead the nation on how to take deeper taught with a view to utilizing our resources in a more beneficial way that will grow the economy.

  Kolade bemoaned the criminalizing and jailing those termed as “rebels” because of their being enterprising enough to take crude oil and use their own method to refine it while the nation has four refineries that could almost be described as moribund.

  He advanced solution to vandalizing the oil pipe through organizing a market and giving chance to anyone that has cottage industry to buy oil legally, refine legally which will invariably lead to having more fuel and reduce crime. 

   The President and Chairman of Council, NIM, Dr. Nelson Uwaga in his welcome remarks said the Institute for the year 2015 would be concentrating on one aspect of its policy which has to do with youth empowerment, entrepreneurship, innovation and job creation, premising the reason for that on the fact that after election and all that, the issue of job creation and youth employment remain paramount.  

   He noted that more jobs for the youth would help in addressing security concerns in the nation as joblessness has created the loophole for manipulation and insecurity.

   “We also believe that it was high time to put emphasis on innovation which will enhance creating such jobs that will meet with the expectations of not just Nigerians but of International community by our youth.  

   “We have created a model after some of those things we saw in some countries that regularly send their youths to places like Cambridge with the aim of making their youth, more innovative.  They are trained in such a way that they look at their immediate environment and then create ideas that can help to create jobs and meet the problems of their countries.

   “So, we think for a start, we are trying to see how we can take some of our youth beyond just entrepreneurship but make them innovative by exposing them to the training at Cambridge, co-opting into the programme some of the banks and financial institutions that will assist the youth on how to access fund after their training.

   “We are also linking up with organizations that would get the youth employed after acquiring the skill since the government only cannot absolve every youth.

Also for the sponsorship of the youth to Cambridge, we shall be the platform while we appeal to individuals, corporate organisations and the government including the local governments or from villages to sponsor the youth who will be predominantly youth with the minimum educational qualification of first degree or HND” he said. 

   The Guest Speaker, Senior Trade Advisor/Permanent Representative to the UN in Geneva, Africa Business Roundtable, Dr. Nelson Olatunji Olaniyi said Nigeria remains the only hope that Africa has got in spite of our challenges and developing our youth which is very critical in fulfilling this role.  

 “The only way we can grow is to develop our youth, grow their capacity but most importantly give them exposure because exposure has a way of refining the thought which is the thinking process.

“Any one can also start business with any amount, be contented and gently watch it grow,” he said.