*To Unveil Digital Skills To Make Nigerian Youths Earn Living Globally
Towards refocusing education in Nigeria to address its needs, President Bola Tinubu administration has earmarked N120 billion for the sector.
This was disclosed on Thursday by the Honourable Minister of Education, Dr Maruf Tunji Alausa, during Ministerial briefing by his ministry in Abuja.
He noted that the intervention will start in Nigeria around May, June this year.
According to him, many tertiary institutions are churning out graduates with skills not presently useful for the country.
Harping on the need to refocus education in tertiary institutions to focus on Nigerian needs, the Minister disclosed that students who had graduated with skills not immediately needed in Nigeria will be retrained.
He said "Almost N120 Billion that the President has approved for us to move his agenda forward. This T-BET program will be launched probably in the month of May. At the latest, the first half of June of this year.
"Speaking about T-BET, we're also putting a lot of renewed emphasis on STEM, Science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and medical services.
"Today, our universities are training a lot of our children with new life skills. So, we're refocusing our education in tertiary schools to focus on areas of needs." he stated
The Minister also pointed out that Nigeria has one of the highest burden of children that are learning poor in the country and with an unbeatable record of having the second highest number of children that are out of school in the world.
Stressing that the government has evolved strategies to clearly and meticulously address the problems in the sector, he said that of the 15 million people that are out of school, 40-50% of them are never in the area of school, 25% of them are drop-out and 25% of them belong to the Almagiri category.
"And there's argument back and forth if the Almajiris are really out of school. Because they go to school, but they're just not getting Western education.
"But we have a strategy on how to take numeracy, literacy, and vocational skills to these Nigerians."
The Minister also disclosed that Nigeria presently has six million out of school young female out of the 20 million population of adolescent girls in Nigeria, ranging from the ages of 12 and 19.
"We've come up with a clear agenda on the Nigerian education sector initiative. We've clear strategic goals, which is moving a nation from a resource-based economy to a knowledge-based economy. We have that capacity."
Stating that 70% of Nigeria's population are below the ages of 30 years, he said the government needs to equip them with the skills that they need.
"And that's what we're doing exactly at the Ministry of Education. To move a country from a resource-based economy to a knowledge-based economy. Clear strategic goals to reduce the number of out-of-school children, reduce learning poverty, increase skills and human capital development.
"Equitable access to basic education, that includes increased level of literacy, numeracy, and critical thinking with skills. Reducing the burden of out-of-school children and integrating these kids into formal education. Giving them formal education. And beyond formal education, giving them life skills for them to be able to be useful to themselves, to the community they live, to the country and the world at large.
"Second pillar, increased quality of education and learning outcomes. And the third pillar, strengthening governance and management in our education system.
"With these pillars, we have three cross-cutting enablers. Data and digitalization. We need data. Without data, you can only plan. Without data, we need data to plan, intervene, and monitor outcomes. We've laid out a clear, robust data and digitalization agenda for our education system. We have inaugurated the Nigerian Educational Data Infrastructure Platform." he said.
In this direction, he said, the Education Ministry is working closely with the Ministry of Communication, Digital Economy, and NITDA.
"We have a clear agenda on how we will run all our educational data. From a foundational level, into one data. Going to a secondary school level, as well as a tertiary school level."
He said that the Ministry has also started intense collaboration with sub-national governments, adding "We've met with the UNHCR when we spoke, and we also have similar meetings that are planned ahead.
"We've worked with UNHCR, the State Commissioners of Education Forum. We've met several times. Also, we're working on developing a new partnership with the private sector.
"So that we can all coordinate together, work together, so that we can all be a part. Our interventions will be more impactful." the Minister said
Speaking on the six high-priority intervention areas already laid out by the government, he said the "Technical, vocational, and educational is the bedrock of what we're doing now.
"We have an expansive agenda to move hundreds of thousands of young Nigerians, to give them the life skills that they need.
"And when we talk about technical and vocational educational training now, it's totally new. It's real technical and vocational training. We're adopting 80% practical training.
"We have clear four steps on how we intend to do this. Step one, we will incentivize our young citizens in Nigeria to go to technical and vocational schools.
"We'll pay them a stipend, pay them accommodation to get to where they can get the skills.
"Step two, the schools that will identify three clear areas of training. Number one, the skill training centers, the vocational enterprise institutes, and the state and federal technical colleges will be the three major areas where we will be training the students.
"We will pay these schools certification fees for each student they train. We want to start a new value chain in a technical and vocational education system.
"As we pay these schools the certification, they will have more funds to invest in building infrastructures, building workshops, and hiring teachers.
"Step three of what we're doing, I told you, we're focusing on practical training. We'll identify the master crafts persons in medium-sized industries, and in artisans.
"We will pay these artisans per child, per citizen that they train. We will use the dual modality. When these students enroll in school, dual-modal training, when they enroll in school, they'll spend three days with artisanal centers at the master crafts person center. Spend one day for their dialectic lectures, and spend one day doing their workshop in their school.
"We'll put plans together. We'll map all these industries to where these school training centers are, where the vocational and technical institutions are, and where our treasury and state technical colleges are. As we do the training, we've done the labor gap analysis."
The Minister explained that the government is not just going to be training people arbitrarily, adding "We have planned ideas of the labor gap needs of each state, each geopolitical zone. So we're targeting training."
Disclosing that the government has reduced the number of trades from 96 to about 26, he said "We've made targets of what we need to do. We've added new trades, like CNG conversion and maintenance, solar panel maintenance and assembling. We've also put electric, we're using more electric vehicles, electric tricycles, electric motorbikes.
"And also, as part of our food security, we're putting a lot of emphasis on training on mechanized farming and livestock production." he stated
He said that the government intends to groom the youths to earn the same living whether they are here in Nigeria, or anywhere in the world.
Based on UNESCO data, the Minister said there are 650,000 vacancies in software development methodologies, about 280,000 vacancies in proactive security, about 160,000 vacancies in IT automation, another 150,000 vacancies in AI and machine learning, about 120,000 vacancies in cloud computing, about 60,000 vacancies worldwide in national language processing.
"If you add that together, we have almost 2 million job vacancies out there. So, what we're doing with our Digital Training Academy, we're working with trainers now that will offer six months to people, young engineers, to get this training.
"We, as a government, will pay for their internet services, we'll encourage them, we would pay for computer for them, or contract with CPT centers. These citizens will be trained, six months, we'll pay for their certification, MWS certification, UAE certification, Google certification.
"Once they get this international certification, they can sit here in Nigeria, apply for jobs anywhere in the world, service a company in Singapore, London, Germany, India, and China, and they'll get very decent pay, $3,000, $4,000 a month. That's not bad pay.
"So that's a strategy that we want to use to move a lot of our young kids, to give them the digital skills that they need to service the world. That will be launched also on or before June of this year." the Minister said
On some of the achievements of the administration, he disclosed that N43 billion has been invested on the students loan programme.
The Minister also disclosed that Nigeria currently has in place anti-bullying policy, just as it is starting reconstruction of the National library.
Just as tablets will be given to Nigerian students, he said that electric buses will soon be given to student unions in tertiary institutions in the country.
Disclosing that 115 school built for Almajiri under previous administrations have become dilapidated, the Minister said every fund being disbursed are now monitored.
Noting that over 200 bills are before the National Assembly for creation of new universities, he opposed the clamour for new universities, as he called for more attention for the existing ones.
The Minister of Information, Mohammed Idris, disclosed that the reforms of the administration are already yielding results, with pains gradually easing off and mass reduction in the prices of foodstuffs.
He urged Nigerians to use the period of Ramadan to offer prayers for Nigeria, adding that Nigeria will eventually emerge prosperous.