Abbas canvasses skill development to address unemployment

By Christiana Ekpa

The Speaker of the House of Representatives, Rep. Tajudeen Abbas has recommended technical skills development to address employment and its attendant challenges in the country.
Abbas made the recommendation on Monday at the inauguration of of the House Committee on Polytechnic and Higher Technical Education in Abuja.
Represented by the Deputy Speaker, Rep. Benjamin Kalu, Abbas said that the world of Information and Technology has now shown that skills are not only triumphing but it boundless possibilities continue to wow the generation.
He said that a cursory look at the statistics from International Labour Organization (ILO), estimates that about 75 million young people in Nigeria are unemployed.
According to him, this report does not only represent a massive pool of untapped talent and human capital but it is speculated to account for a significant cause of social unrest and individual despair.
“In order to address our peculiar challenges fundamental need to be in place; that is, skill development with special attention to the mechanisms that connects education to employment.
“There is no other route than for us to retool our Technical Education and Vocational Training (TVET) systems as part of our broad educational reforms.
“In recognition of this and the fact that a lot is being done with university education already, the current House leadership decided to carve out this committee so that adequate attention in terms of legislation, policy and oversight is paid to our polytechnics, monotechnics, technical institutes and vocational centers; such that technical education at post-secondary levels meets their purposes,” he said.