Ekiti State government has urged youths in the state to embrace the state’s technical and vocational education for innovation, self-reliance and economic empowerment.
The Chairman, Ekiti State Board for Technical and Vocational Education, Kayode Babade stated this on Tuesday in Ado-Ekiti during the interactive S’etigbo multicast anchored by the Bureau of Community Communications.
The board chairman explained that the administration of Governor Biodun Oyebanji is undergoing various infrastructural and curriculum reforms across all the state-owned technical and vocational institutions for relevance and employability of Ekiti people.
He urged the youths to utilize the gains of technical and vocational studies set-up by the state government aimed at ensuring that they acquire marketable skills to become employers of labour.
His words: “Vocational education and skill acquisition has been a very major issue all over the world. And today in Nigeria, the federal government and the state government have keen into this particular program. Because one, it has three advantages. One, it makes a youth self-employed. Two, it can make a youth put food on his own table and he could be an employer of labour himself, having set up his own enterprise.
“It is a very wonderful thing to have a skill so that you can fend for yourself. Everybody can’t work for government. With the population of Nigeria going to about 250 million, how many people will have work? Even over 40% of the population are youths, even if not more than that. How many of them will government employ?
“Rather than let people go and create jobs. First of all, acquire a skill and then set up your own job. You’ll be independent, you’ll fend for yourself, you have your own flexible time to work and earn a living. So, this is our major focus in the Board for Technical and Vocational Education to train Ekiti youths, give them skills, marketable skills that can make them fend for themselves and for others and their family.
“The Government Technical College in Ado-Ekiti is one of the best in the West African sub-region in terms of infrastructure, in terms of equipment. Any of our technical colleges in Ikole, Otun and Igbara-Odo can compete with any technical college in this nation. But Ado stands out as one of the best in West Africa. The way it has been equipped in infrastructure and even in personnel. Government is doing everything for that place and others to maintain the standards.
“And so we want to use the opportunity to appreciate the governor for what he’s doing in technical education, which is part of his agenda. That is manpower development, youth employment. There is youth restiveness all over the place. There are protests here today and tomorrow. An idle man is the devil’s workshop. The youths should go and learn skills and come to us. We will give them skills in three years, and they will become somebody.”
