Nigerians need to downplay the emphasis on certificates and promote skills 

The Chief Executive Officer of Fides Et Ratio Academy, Paul Chukwuma, has said there is an urgent need to anchor Nigeria’s education system on skill development instead of mere certificates that has not made the country productive.

Chukwuma who stated this at a briefing in Abuja, said it is not only students seeking admission into the universities that need some skills that will de-emphasise paper qualifications in the country but that other workers in all sectors should have technology based skills.

He said his academy would soon roll out a massive training programme that will bridge the skill gap in the country.

Chukwuma, who owns a university in East Africa,said: “I discovered the basic issue we have in our educational system is the system we were introduced to, and to a very large extent, what we still carry along is deficient in the key essential elements that every human being should think about, and that is skills.”

“We prioritized paper qualifications over skills; everybody wants to be a PhD holder; everybody wants to be a professor, even when you cannot defend that title,” he said.

While saying that some education institutions in Europe have some of their technical departments headed by individuals without degrees but with skills, Chukwuma said Fides Et Ratio Academy was established to change the narrative by focusing on skill development.

Speaking on the planned skills training programme that is expected to kick off soon, Chukwuma, who was accompanied by a member of the House of Representatives, Afam Ogene, said Nigeria needs to leverage on Information and Communication Technology skills by harnessing the talents of its youth to address the challenges of the country.

“We have the best brains, people whose brains you can’t equate with anything but a computer, because of the kind of ingenuity we experienced that we see coming from the young people that get obliterated along the line simply because they have not been nurtured.”

While calling on the Nigerian media to push the agenda of ICT skills development in the country, Chukwuma linked the unemployment problem in the nation to the production of graduates without skills, even as he called for more synergy between institutions and industry.