Unemployment: Experts urge youths to acquire skills

Young Nigerians have been enjoined to acquire requisite skills as a way of tackling rising unemployment in the country.

Experts and employers who spoke at the opening of the second training centre of Daikin in Nigeria, in partnership with Field of Skills and Dream VTE, noted that skilled people were hardly unemployed.

The Vice President at Daikin Middle East and Africa (MEA), Tuna Gulenc, said that the newly established centre is equipped with state-of-the-art facilities and training equipment, allowing the technicians to gain hands-on experience with Daikin’s cutting-edge HVAC solutions.

Director at Field of Skills and Dream, Omowale Ogunrinde, who has been running training institutes for over 20 years in at least 14 states in the country, stressed that Nigeria needed to rejig her educational system to ensure that required skills were provided for the industry.

“You can’t be unemployed if you have skills. Young people are unemployed because they don’t have skills. No student that leaves here is unemployed. Even the ones we are yet to commence their training, people are competing to have them. That tells you that there are jobs, but there are no skilled people. So the educational system needs to be rejigged to ensure that we are teaching them what the industry needs so that they can have jobs,” she said.