Apprenticeship as panacea for high rate of unemployment in Nigeria

The Director-General of the Industrial Training Fund (ITF), Mr Joseph Ari says institutionalising apprenticeship and traineeship will address the high rate of poverty and unemployment.

Ari said this on Thursday in Abuja at the Second National Skills programme with the theme, “Institutionalising Apprenticeship and Traineeship for National Development”.

According to him, the increasing rate of unemployment and poverty is a wakeup call for all including ITF, which core mandate is skills development to seek lasting solution.

He said the choice of this theme was deliberate because of soaring unemployment and poverty in Nigeria and how we can apply apprenticeship in resolving it.

“This is bearing in mind how well it worked miracles for countries that took that route when they contended with issues such as we are facing now.”

Ari said repositioning apprenticeship would help tackle increasing poverty and unemployment as indicated by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).

The NBS in its Labour Force Statistics, Unemployment and Underemployment Report of Q4 2020, unemployed persons in the economically active or working age, 15 to 65 was 122,049,400.

“Of this number, 69,675,468 were willing to work, but only 46,488,079 were in paid employment.

“What could be inferred from the survey is that more than 23 million Nigerians that were perhaps qualified and willing to work were without jobs.

“It also shows that the unemployment rate among the youth, 15 to 35 years, was up by eight per cent.

“It rose from 34.9 per cent to 42.5 per cent, which is the highest among other age groupings within the period under review,” he said.

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Ari expressed concern that in spite of the high unemployment rate, rather than absence of jobs, vacancies still existed in several sectors.

He said that a Skills Gap Assessment of six priority sectors revealed that some vacancies could not be filled by Nigerians because of lack of requisite skills.

“The question that arises from this paradox is, how can we plug these gaps using apprenticeship?

“The answer to this question can be found in countries such as Germany, China, Australia, USA and others.

“These countries at various times faced similar challenges such as we are contending with.

“What they did was to pour greater investments in skills acquisition and apprenticeship training,” he said.

Ari explained that apprenticeship had been an age-long tradition and an institution in Nigeria.

He said that it was a common feature in the traditional setting to see people engage in vocations like farming, carving, carpentry, catering, and building among others.

He, however, expressed concern that the potential of apprenticeship in tackling unemployment and poverty had not been fully actualised in Nigeria.

Ari said in its fifty years of existence, ITF had pursued its mandate with single-mindedness and vigour.

He said that ITF had trained more than 22 million Nigerians whose contributions to the growth of the various sectors of the economy could not be quantified.

Ari called on curriculum planners and employers’ associations to design youth apprenticeship programmes among other suggestions.

He expressed optimism that the programme would provide the platform to articulate strategies for a robust apprenticeship scheme in Nigeria.

The Minister of Industry, Trade and Investment, Adeniyi Adebayo, commended ITF’s commitment to creating avenues for dialogue on ways of enhancing skills acquisition.

He lauded the convening of the programme, saying its theme aligned with efforts by the Federal Government to resolve challenges linked with rising unemployment and poverty.

Adebayo, who was represented by the Minister of State for Industry, Trade and Investment, Maryam Katagum, commended ITF for being one of the foremost agencies under the ministry.