By Stanley Onyekwere
T
he FCT Administration has expressed readiness to partner with the Ladi Memorial Foundation (LMF) on a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) powered 2024 sewing championship, which is the first sewing national competition in Nigeria.
It was gathered that over 36,000 youth are expected to participate in the National Sewing Championship at the state level across the 36 states of the Federation and the FCT. FCT and other states that will host the geo-political zonal competitions are: Borno, Kano, Oyo, Enugu and Rivers States
Mandate Secretary of the FCTA Education Secretariat, Dr. Danlami Hayyo, who made this position known while receiving a delegation from LMF, partners of the UNESCO’s pilot sewing competition in the FCT in 2023, in Abuja, commended the Organisation for the initiative.
Hayyo said, skills training is key in solving Nigeria’s unemployment crisis, while growing wealth among the young population.
He adds: “This is very important, it is something that we need to encourage, if we emphasise on skills, we are going to solve a lot of problems in this country. If a child learns garment making for instance, this child will not wait for a government job.
“My neighbor is a garment maker, if you see the car he is driving, the house he owns, you will be surprised that a garment maker can be that rich, it is because he is good at what he does and he has big clients.”
Also, the Secretary explained that skills acquisition is critical in engaging youths positively, saying; “we are going to support the National Sewing Championship, if we don’t support this, what else are we going to support?”
“We are going to support the programme 100 percent, I will sit down with the team, Directors and some of the people that participated in the 2023 FCT pilot scheme of sewing competition to see how we can support the national sewing championship.”
Hayyo also accepted that the Administration would host the competition at the zonal level for the north Central geopolitical zone.
On her part, the Coordinator of the UNESCO support Sewing Championship and the Executive Director of LMF, Mrs Rosemary Ojochenemi Osikoye said the project is designed to up skill the Nigerian youth.
Osikoye commended the sectors under the Educational Secretariat that participated in the FCT Sewing Competition in 2023.
“FCT was a model to emulate and a model to beat. For last year, what we did was intense, the Sewing Championship was approved by UNESCO under the participation programme of 2022/2023.
“The usual idea for the participation programme is to do a pilot project that meets the needs of the host country, for Nigeria, only five projects were approved and this was the only in the educational sector.
“I think they did it for two things, one, since 1950, Nigeria has not taken part in the World skills competition and the second idea is supporting learning of skills through general eduction and strengthening the network between entrepreneurship and the market sector”, she stated.
The sewing championship is expected to commence with registration from March to July, 2024, with youth from ages 12 to 22 years eligible to contest.
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