At a time when tertiary educational institutions across the country are increasing tuition fees, a Kano-based voluntary institution, the Institute of Graphics Communications, is defying the odds by providing free graphics and entrepreneurial skills to youths in the state.
Students, including People With Disabilities (PWDs), are being trained and mentored on various skills.
The institute, which started from the community level in 2013, is flourishing courtesy of the quality knowledge and skills it offers. According to community members, the school has so far graduated over 200 people who are now into entrepreneurial businesses with some of them employing others.
Established with the sole aim of reducing dependence on government jobs and embracing skill acquisition for the development of the state, the school is offering skills to youths free of charge. It operates during the study gap between secondary and university or tertiary institution education.
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The students are offered admission into the school after they are nominated by various civil society and community development groups across the metropolitan areas of the state. They are nominated after a careful study of their behaviour and commitment to becoming better citizens of the country, as well as readiness to become independent.
From its establishment to date, it has so far graduated 231 students: 163 males and 55 females. To bridge the gap and carry along all sorts of people, the school included in each of the classes, people living with disabilities (PWDs) who are performing excellently.
At its second convocation ceremony at the weekend for 61 graduating students, several items that were produced by the graduating, old and current students of the school were showcased. While the ladies focused mostly on packaging soybeans, liquid soap products, house utensils and more, the males focused on graphics design, and architectural design, with some of them producing tea leaves from gingerbread palm (goruba in Hausa) and so on.
Speaking during the ceremony which was held at the Yusuf Maitama Sule University Kano (YUMSUK), the founder of the school, Alhaji Ibrahim Danjuma Abdullahi, said the motive behind establishing the school was to improve skills among youth for them to become independent and employ others.
He said the current realities in the country and the world at large prompted the need to have such institutions that will engage youths and help them shun engaging in drug abuse and other criminal activities.
According to him, the country offered free education to people of his generation, hence the need to pay back to the nation by practising the same gesture.
“After a pilot study, we thought that it is no longer that time. We don’t have to wait for the government to provide these kinds of opportunities. We need to set up something that will give our youths the skills to depend on themselves.
“We all got our own education free, and as we finished jobs were waiting for us. The country has done the best for us in those days. But nowadays things have changed. The unemployment rate is high, we need to train our youth to embrace skills. This is the only solution to our problem,” he said.
The founder said with his background in computer graphics design and knowledge of journalism, alongside people with different entrepreneurial backgrounds from different communities, they are able to achieve their aim of providing qualitative education to the students.
Also speaking, one of the stakeholders in the school, Dr Binta Bala, who is also physically challenged, said they have so far achieved a lot as the majority of the students are into various businesses using skills they acquired from the school.
She said computer graphics design has opened up business opportunities for the students. “Many of them will produce a particular useful item and also design and print the package. They did everything by themselves. This is a great achievement.”
She urged the government to support the school with a permanent building and also provide an avenue for the school to seek advice from relevant governmental agencies.
“The founder has said in his speech that only Tarauni Local Government Council has ever supported us with N50,000. But apart from that, we are sourcing the resources by ourselves. Even the place we are using is rented since we don’t have our own property.”
Presenting his convocation lecture at the event, a foremost industrialist in the state, Alhaji Isyaku Umar Tofa, the Makama Bichi, said over-dependence on buying products from abroad has contributed to the challenges the state is facing in entrepreneurship skills, which also led to the decay of the industrial areas.
The lecture, with the theme ‘Over-dependence on Buying and Selling: Hindrance to Kano’s Industrial Development’, the guest speaker attributed the challenges to the lack of constant power supply, decay in infrastructure and inability of relevant government authorities to actively respond to the city’s rapid urbanization.
Represented by the Dan Amar Tofa, Alhaji Habibu Abdullahi Tofa, the Makama mentioned several other challenges that contributed to the decay of industrialization to include lack of constant energy generation, lack of capital, political sentiment, deficiency in manpower training, lack of credit to industries, lack of basic infrastructural amenities and lack of social security.
“No matter how we want to view the situation, the decline in manufacturing in Kano is posing grave challenges in the area of economic growth and employment opportunities.
“Despite the noise about transition to knowledge economy, no developing nation would survive the uncertainties of the global system without the respectable industrial-based economy,” the Makama of Bichi, who is also the district head of Tofa local government said at the event.
He challenged the students to embrace technology and the modern system of business enterprises and utilize the skills to revolutionize the industrial sector of the state.
On his part, the Emir of Kano, Alhaji Aminu Ado Bayero, commended the founders of the institute for the kind gesture to their immediate communities and called on others to emulate them in providing skills to our teeming youths.
Represented by the Barde Kerarriya of Kano, Alhaji Ahmad Kabiru Bayero, the emir said the initiative came at a time when the government cannot provide employment for all due to the growing population and economic crisis facing the world.
While assuring full support for the development of the institute, the emir pledged the sum of N200,000 to any of the graphics design students who designed a new Logo for Kano Emirate within the next three months.
A portrait of the representative of the emir was also designed by one of the students within 40 minutes while the event was ongoing.
Representatives of the National Board for Technical Education (NBTE), Ahmadu Bello University (ABU) Zaria, Kano State Secondary Schools Management Board (KSSMB), Aminu Kano College of Islamic and Legal Studies and YUMSUK, promised to collaborate with the school in the areas of issuing certificates, and licensing among others.
However, while displaying items they produced during their study, some of the students said they faced challenges taking them beyond local consumption, as they are yet to be issued with NAFDAC numbers.
One of the students, Rukayya Abdullahi, who produced liquid soap and packaged soybean said, “We have learned a lot in this school to the extent that we are now producing many things. But our challenge now is NAFDAC, they are yet to register us. Some people will not patronize us without that.”
Another student, Madina A. Yaro, who is physically challenged said with the training she got in the school, she is able to package soybeans, produce liquid soap and flower bases. She said the flower bases were made after diluting old newspapers and that she is willing to expand beyond that.
Meanwhile, stakeholders at the event promised to intervene for the students to get their NAFDAC numbers and also certificates that can secure them job opportunities and called on government, companies and individuals to patronize them.
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