The National Board for Technical Education (NBTE) has promised that it will retrain and equip Master Craftsmen in the North East subregion to enable them provide the required skilled manpower for the development of the Mabila hydropower power project and the Kolmani oil drilling.
The disclosure was made by the Deputy Director, Skills Acquisition of the NBTE, Suleiman Yusuf while fielding questions from journalists in Gombe, shortly after the opening ceremony of the National Skills Qualification sensitization workshop for North East organized by NBTE and funded by the World Bank.
“We have four components under the project; the first component is incentivization of Technical Colleges, the second component which we are here for, is the informal apprenticeship trying to formalize the informal apprenticeship system in Nigeria, the third component covers Technical Teacher Development and the fourth components roll out of Nigeria Skills qualification framework,” Suleiman explained.
He also said that the NBTE is trying to raise awareness by bringing the master craftsmen and women who the Board is trying and to partner with, towards the delivery of the skills programme in Nigeria.
He said that “They are the key stakeholders we need because they already have apprentices under them, and they are already training, so, with this sensitization, we are attempting to raise awareness on how to structure the system of training that is happening in the informal sector.”
He also said that the beneficiaries that the government targets are the stakeholders of Master craftsmen who under them, there are apprentices and NBTE is specifically looking for the apprentices working under the master craft persons to tell them what National Skills Qualification is about.
According to him, all the projects like the Mambila hydropower project, and Kolmani Oil drilling in the North East, require skilled manpower, stressing that what we mean is, having competency based on the national standard and national certification.
The Deputy Director, Skills of the National Board for Technical Education, said that the NBTE is the body responsible for the coordination of all aspects of Technical and Vocational Education and training falling outside the university.
He explained that the implementers of Innovation Development and Effectiveness in the Acquisitions of Skills (IDEAS) is a World Bank-supported project that the Federal Ministry of Education secured from the World Bank.
According to him, “the project of which many of our young people who are skilled but they don’t have that recognition and certification and with this, we are trying to raise an awareness for them.”
“Let them come, let us partner to see that we develop their capacity, and then they have a National certification before the opportunity of engagement with the oil and gas and the Mombila project come up.”
Suleiman Yusuf concluded by saying, “Subsequently, there will be training to build their capacity over 100 participants drawn from across the states in the North-East sub-region.”
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