By Adamu Lawal Toro
A nation is not built on oil. It is built on hands that know what to do.
On Monday, at Rigachikun on the outskirts of Kaduna, Governor Uba Sani broke ground for a Skill Development Centre of the National Agency for Science and Engineering Infrastructure (NASENI). The state provided the land and handed the Certificate of Occupancy to NASENI’s Executive Vice Chairman, Khalil Suleiman Halilu.
“Today, we lay the foundation for an institution that will expand opportunity, strengthen productive capacity and prepare our people for the demands of a changing economy,” the governor said. He thanked President Bola Tinubu for approving the centre for Kaduna State.
It would be easy to dismiss this as one more groundbreaking ceremony in a country full of foundation stones that never became buildings. That would be a mistake. What matters is not the ceremony but the idea behind it, and the idea is the right one.
Nigeria’s problem is not a shortage of young people. It is a shortage of young people with skills the economy can use. Every year, our universities and polytechnics graduate thousands who hold certificates but cannot repair a solar inverter, wire a building or maintain a tractor. Meanwhile, the artisans who do this work are ageing, and many of the most complex jobs end up going to foreigners.
That is the gap NASENI says this centre will close. According to Halilu, it will train young people to assemble, operate and maintain advanced equipment, the kind of practical competence that turns a jobless graduate into a technician, and a technician into an employer.
Governor Sani pushed the argument further. A country that depends on foreign suppliers for its defence and security technology, he warned, leaves itself exposed when those suppliers control the designs and the know-how. Self-reliance, he said, goes beyond buying sophisticated equipment. It means having Nigerians who can build it, fix it and improve it.
He is right. And the logic reaches well beyond security.
Consider agriculture, the backbone of Kaduna’s economy. The governor spoke of drones delivering medicines to remote communities and of precision farming. Such technologies are no longer science fiction. But they are useless to a farmer in Ikara or Kauru if there is no one nearby who can operate them, service them and train others.
Technology without skills is just expensive scrap.
Kaduna is not starting from nothing. In August, the Kaduna State Institute of Vocational Training and Skills Development graduated 4,050 trainees from its campuses in Rigachikun, Soba and Samaru Kataf. They were trained in 14 trades, from electrical installation and solar installation to mechatronics, aluminium fabrication and computer hardware repair. The institute is accredited by the National Board for Technical Education.
The NASENI centre should build on that foundation, not duplicate it. The governor himself said it must complement existing institutions and respond to the needs of industry. That is the correct instinct.
Too many skills programmes in Nigeria train people for jobs that do not exist, hand out starter packs that are sold within a week, and measure success by the number of photographs taken at the graduation.
So the real test lies ahead.
Will the centre be completed on time and to standard? Will it be properly equipped, or will its workshops be filled with machines no one can power? Will its instructors be trained, paid and retained? Will its graduates be linked to employers, cooperatives and credit? And will it reach those who need it most?
On that last point, the governor made a commitment worth holding him to. He said women, persons with disabilities and young people from underserved communities must have meaningful access.
In a state where insecurity has emptied villages and pushed thousands of young men towards idleness and worse, that commitment is not charity. It is security policy.
A young man who can earn a living repairing solar panels is a young man no bandit can easily recruit. A young woman who can run her own fabrication workshop is a household lifted out of poverty.
Skills are the cheapest counter-insurgency a government can buy.
NASENI, the contractors and the Kaduna State Government now owe the public one thing above all: delivery. Kaduna has seen enough foundation stones. It needs finished buildings, working machines and graduates with jobs.
In the end, this centre will not be judged by Monday’s speeches or by the dignitaries who turned up.
It will be judged by a young man from a village in southern Kaduna who walks in with nothing but his hands and walks out with a trade, a toolbox and a future.
That is what building tomorrow today really means.
Toro is a journalist based in Bauchi.
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