LASTVEB director tasks students on skills acquisition
Director of Technical and Vocational Services at the Lagos State Technical and Vocational Education Board (LASTVEB), Mr. Laolu Oguntuyi, has stressed the need for students to acquire more knowledge and skills for economic growth because every sector needs better skills to keep running.
Oguntuyi said this in Abeokuta, capital of Ogun State, during the 22nd annual conference of National Association of Engineering Craftsmen (NAEC) with the theme “Engineering Skills Acquisition and Entrepreneurial Growth as a Veritable Tool for National Development”.
The Director, who was the lead paper presenter, said skills open doors to greatness adding that skill acquisition is an important tool for achieving success in life while entrepreneurship is a central pillar to economic growth and development as well as employment generation.
“Government should set machinery in motion to provide an enabling environment characterised by adequate infrastructural facilities.
Allocation of appropriate funds for Technical Vocational and Entrepreneurship Training and curriculum reforms should be pursued aggressively by government”, he said.
He also recommended the need for an articulated Nigerian Skills Qualification Framework and provision of adequate infrastructural facilities in the vocational institutions.
He highlighted the roles of entrepreneurs in economic development to include capital formation, generation of employment, improvement of per capital income, resource mobilisation, national self-reliance and harnessing natural resources among others.
In his keynote address, Prof. E.S.A Ajisegiri from Federal University of Agriculture, Abeokuta (FUNAAB), Ogun State, said without the addition of value in whatever one is doing, such cannot be sought after saying as a nation people must begin to think of how to make the country better by adding value to it.
“Technology is the key to unlock all the potentials inside of a man, the level of the development of a nation is directly proportionate to the number of skilled engineers and the nation has craftsmen that are supposed to rule the world”, he said.
Prof. Ajisegiri portends that the first thing the country should do is to develop human capacity saying there is a misconception about technical schools that they are meant for dropouts.
“Nigerians are losing the concept of apprenticeship forgetting that the concepts of theory and practical are interwoven and it is important that the two of them are blended.
The role of specialisation is equally important, people must know the general aspect of their core areas”, he said.
President of NAEC, Engineer Tanko Gyang, decried inadequate number of technical colleges across the country with poor infrastructure in the existing ones while calling on Ogun State government to promote their members who are working in various ministries in the state.
He said the theme for this year’s conference was carefully selected to reflect the current efforts of acquiring engineering professional skills and self-reliance to national development by training the youths for skill/vocational programme to create employment for them.
Esther Taiwo
