Mr Kayode Babade, Chairman, Ekiti State Board for Technical and Vocational Education, says youths should embrace technical and vocational education for innovation, self-reliance and economic empowerment.
Babade, who gave the advice on Thursday in Ado-Ekiti during a chat with news men, said “embracing technical and vocational education was better than waiting for unavailable white-collar jobs”.
According to him, youths should utilise the gains of technical and vocational studies set-up, which is aimed at acquiring marketable skills to become employers of labour.
“The present administration in the state is undergoing various infrastructural and curriculum reforms across all the state-owned technical and vocational institutions for relevance and employability of Ekiti people.
“Vocational education and skills acquisition have been very major issues all over the world and today in Nigeria, the federal and state governments have keyed into this particular programme.
“It has three advantages: one, it makes youths self-employed; two, it puts food on their table; and three, he could be an employer of labour himself, having set up his own enterprise.
“It is a very wonderful thing for youths to have skills to enable them fend for themselves because everybody can’t work for government,” he said.
The board chairman explained that over 40 per cent of the Nigerian populace were youths, hence, so many of them would not be employed by the government.
According to Babade, the population of Nigeria is going to about 250 million, so how many people will have government work?, rather, let people go and create jobs.
“First of all, acquire a skill and then set up your own job. You’ll be independent, fend for yourself, own flexible time to work and earn a living.
“So, our major focus in the Board for Technical and Vocational Education is to train Ekiti youths, give them marketable skills that can make them self-reliant for their family and others.
“Any of the technical colleges in Ikole, Otun and Igbara-Odo can compete with any technical colleges in Nigeria.
“The Government Technical College in Ado-Ekiti is one of the best in the West African sub-region in terms of infrastructure and equipment. Government is doing everything for that place and others to maintain the standards.
“That is manpower development, youth employment, and there is youth restiveness all over the place, remember that an idle man is the devil’s workshop,” he said
