We empowered 11, 000 youths in 1 year, says ITF chief

The Industrial Training Fund (ITF) has said it empowered over 11,000 youths across the country in the last one year.

The Director General of ITF, Mr Joseph Ari said this in Ilorin, Kwara state saying “we took 300 youths in every state of the federation including the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja.

“The programme is finishing in December. What we did last year was to identify three trade areas. If we continue like that slowly and steadily, we will get to the destination point,” he said.

The DG said that Nigeria needs hands-on trade to match its booming population, saying that “our own situation is even more dangerous than ever based on the fact that our population is booming by the day. A booming population without hands-on trade will bring about restiveness, kidnapping as all the vices in the society will escalate.”

“The population of the country is exploding by the day and if we do not empower the people with hands-on trade then we are in trouble. There is no nation that can grow without hands-on trade.

“Paper qualification will not take us far. In other nations of the world who have had paper qualification, they had to fall back on skills development and so such countries are today regarded as the developed nations of the world on account of skills,” he noted.

On the women scheme, the director general said: “We deliberately chose the Women Scheme Empowerment Programme (WOSEP) to empower the women for a reason because we have seen that most of our women are laid back.

“There is the need to challenge their ingenuity and potentials so that they will be able to take their destinies in their hands. We do that by equipping them with the needed requisite skills, so that they will create wealth and value for the country given their number.

“In the same vein, we also have similar intervention programme for the indigent group, for the physically challenged and for young men and women. The essence of NISDP is to escalate skills in our country.

“We have continuously said that is the currency of the 21st century. Without it, no country can grow and no economy can really make progress. We have been going round to implore the stakeholders including the state government to join forces with the ITF,” Mr. Ari said.

It will be recalled that the scheme is under ITF National Industrial Skills Development Programme (NISDP).