For years, Nigeria’s skills development conversation has been dominated by a familiar complaint: too much emphasis on certificates and theory, and too little on practical competence.

But a new training model being explored by the Nigerian Education Loan Fund (NELFUND) and the Industrial Training Fund (ITF) could offer a different pathway, one that puts the hands, tools and practical abilities of Nigerian youths at the centre of learning.

The proposed partnership between the two government agencies is expected to support vocational and technical training, with artisans and aspiring craftsmen receiving hands on instruction from expatriate trainers and working towards internationally recognised certifications.

A visit to one of the training centres by ITF Director of Special Duties, Kayode Alakija, offered a glimpse of what the initiative could achieve if sustained and expanded nationwide.

Alakija, who said he had been involved in the project from its inception and witnessed the setting up of some of the workshops, was visibly impressed by the progress made by trainees after only three weeks. “I was privileged to be part of this project from the onset, and I knew how this workshop was before now,” he said.

According to him, the transformation of the training facilities and the quality of work produced by the trainees within such a short period demonstrated the potential of practical skills training.

At the tiling section, for instance, trainees had recreated a real life toilet environment, including mounting a water closet and tiling around it. The ITF Director said such practical exercises were important because they exposed trainees to the situations they were likely to encounter on actual construction sites.

“I think this is just trying to create a new, real life situation of what they are likely to meet when they are on site,” he said.

The trainees’ individual projects also appeared to have challenged the assumption that meaningful technical competence requires years of apprenticeship before results can be seen.

One of the trainees, Abusuke Badare, undergoing a Level One Diploma in Tiling, described the early practical sessions as remarkable.

“Yesterday we had all theoretical work, and today is the first day of hands on,” Badare said, adding that she was amazed by what she had been able to accomplish after only a few days of practical training.

The emphasis on hands on learning was equally evident in the carpentry workshop, where trainees were already producing benches, racks, rafters and roofing structures.

Mukta Oloriegbe, a Level One Diploma trainee in carpentry, said the training had exposed him to skills that were often neglected by artisans, particularly workplace safety.

“Most of the Nigerian artisans, we don’t really take note of safety,” he said, noting that trainees were being taught to use protective equipment and observe safety procedures alongside technical skills.

The urgency of such an intervention becomes clearer when placed against Nigeria’s wider education and labour market crisis.

UNICEF’s latest assessment says more than 10 million primary school age children in Nigeria remain out of school, while only one in four children is able to read at a basic level. The organisation’s 2026 assessment underlines the extent to which Nigeria’s human capital challenge begins long before young people reach the labour market.

The learning crisis is equally stark. UNICEF says 75 per cent of Nigerian children aged seven to 14 cannot read a simple sentence or solve a basic mathematics problem.

The challenge, therefore, is not simply getting young Nigerians into classrooms. It is ensuring that education eventually translates into usable skills and better livelihoods.

Also, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) reported that unemployment stood at 4.3 per cent in the second quarter of 2024, while informal employment remained exceptionally high at 93 per cent. Pundits say this figure is particularly important to the skills debate because it shows the nature of the Nigerian labour market. For millions of Nigerians, particularly young people, the route to earning a living is through self employment, apprenticeships, small businesses and trades rather than conventional salaried employment.

It is against this backdrop that the emerging NELFUND, ITF partnership assumes greater significance.

NELFUND’s expansion into vocational training is not entirely new. In November 2025, Managing Director, Akintunde Sawyerr, announced plans to extend the Fund’s student loan scheme to cover vocational and skills acquisition programmes.

At the time, Sawyerr said NELFUND had received 1.067 million loan applications, with 624,000 students benefiting. He disclosed that N65 billion had been paid directly to 239 government owned institutions, while another N51 billion had been disbursed as upkeep allowances.

The plan followed President Bola Tinubu’s directive for NELFUND to broaden its focus and extend interest free loans to Nigerians interested in skill development programmes.

The proposed collaboration with ITF could therefore provide the practical machinery for turning that policy direction into reality. And the evidence from the training centre suggests there is considerable promise in such an approach.

The programme’s British trainers have also been impressed by the speed at which the Nigerian trainees are adapting. Andy Cranham, a carpentry tutor, said the trainees had progressed from learning basic butt joints to constructing truss rafters and hand cut roofs within three weeks.

He explained that the trainees had worked entirely with hand tools, allowing them to develop the fundamental skills required of a carpenter rather than becoming dependent on power tools. “For me, it’s been brilliant because they really have put together some amazing work,” Cranham said.

The training extends beyond carpentry and tiling. At the drylining section, trainees had constructed partition walls, windows and doors, while the painting and decoration unit was exposing participants to techniques ranging from surface preparation and stain blocking to colour mixing, wallpapering and decorative designs.

Robson, the painting and decorating tutor, explained that trainees were learning how to prepare surfaces properly before applying paint, including dealing with dampness and water damage.

The bricklaying and block making sections similarly combine theory with practical construction work.

For Alakija, the programme represents more than the training of individual artisans. It offers a possible template for transforming Nigeria’s wider technical and vocational education ecosystem.

He said the ITF leadership was committed to replicating the model across the country’s geopolitical zones, while artisans and master craftsmen from ITF accredited training centres would be brought to observe the system and learn how to establish and operate effective practical training facilities.

The economic argument for such investment is equally compelling. A World Bank assessment released in February 2026 found that Nigeria’s deficits in nutrition, learning and skills were limiting future earnings. Its Human Capital Index Plus data showed that increasing effective years of schooling to 12 years could raise labour earnings by about 20 per cent over the long term.

The finding reinforces the connection between education, skills and economic productivity. It also suggests that investment in human capital should not end with enrolment or certification but must improve the actual capabilities of Nigerians entering the workforce.

For NELFUND, this presents an opportunity to move education financing beyond the traditional university pathway and support Nigerians whose economic value may be realised through a trade, craft or technical profession.

The scale of the Fund’s operations makes the prospect even more significant. As of August 2026, NELFUND had received 1.6 million applications and disbursed over N322 billion across 319 beneficiary institutions, providing an established financing platform that could potentially be extended to vocational and technical education.

If that financing architecture is extended effectively to vocational and technical training, the implications could be substantial. It would mean that a Nigerian who wants to become a carpenter, tiler, painter, electrician, plumber, bricklayer or practitioner of another technical trade could potentially have access to structured training without having to bear the entire financial burden upfront.

For Alakija, however, the ultimate test would be whether the programme can produce enough skilled workers to alter Nigeria’s dependence on foreign artisans.

He acknowledged concerns that once trained and certified, some beneficiaries could leave the country in search of better opportunities. But he argued that the solution was to create a system in which trained artisans would transfer their knowledge to others. “We want them to also cascade it down to other artisans, so that they can learn from them,” he said.

His ambition is substantial: produce thousands of skilled artisans annually over several consecutive years until the country develops a critical mass of competent workers capable of meeting domestic demand.

According to him, “If we’re able to produce some thousands of artisans in various trades for five continuous years, then our story will change in Nigeria”.

That, ultimately, may be the most important promise of the NELFUND ITF partnership: not merely to produce certificate holders, but skilled Nigerians capable of building, repairing, creating and earning from their own hands.

In a country where more than 10 million children remain out of school, where only one in four children can read at a basic level, and where 93 per cent of employment is informal, the case for practical and market relevant skills is difficult to ignore.

The World Bank’s latest human capital assessment adds another dimension: better education and skills are not merely social investments but economic ones, with stronger human capital capable of translating into higher earnings over time.

The challenge now is to move the partnership from exploration to scale and ensure that the impressive work already being produced in the workshops becomes the beginning of a countrywide skills revolution.