The Nigerian Minister of Education, Adamu Adamu, says the successful implementation of the Innovation Development and Effectiveness in Acquisition of Skills (IDEAS) Project will further help to grow the country’s economy.
He made the remark on Monday, at the official launch of the IDEAS Project held at the Presidential Villa, in Abuja, the nation’s capital.
The programme, which also had a technical session, was organized in collaboration with the World Bank.
The Minister, who was represented at the event by the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Education, Mr Andrew David Adejoh, stressed that the training workshop provides monitoring and evaluation officers with the opportunity to better their capacity to effectively carry out their assigned activities across all four project components.
He emphasized the importance of strict monitoring and evaluation of the implementation of the programme, so as to achieve the objectives of the project.
The Minister, who thanked the World Bank for providing the necessary platform for the national project launch, also emphasized that “The training was meant to achieve the sole aim of strengthening, monitoring and evaluation capacity in the management of the IDEAS Project.”
Utilization
Country Director of the World Bank in Nigeria, Mr Shubham Chaudhuri, urged the benefitting states to make judicious use of the funds to improve the education sector in their states.
He said the IDEAS project, if well implemented, will help address the problem of unemployment in Nigeria.
“It is an important project that is leveraged on the federal and State governments initiatives including producing mid-level technicians with relevant skills both for the formal and informal sectors and developing a sustainable growth for improving youth empowerment and employment,” he said.
Mr Chaudhuri also revealed that the World Bank is supporting the programme with investment grants to selected technical colleges with the aim of developing them as centres of excellence.
New Approach
In his keynote address, the Ekiti State Governor, Kayode Fayemi urged stakeholders in the country’s education sector to evolve a new approach to rendering education in the country as the ‘White-collar-focused’ system can no longer support national development.
Fayemi, who is also the Chairman of the Nigeria Governors’ Forum said skills must be tapped form students at all levels of education, to serve as the bedrock of national development.
He noted with delight that Nigeria is blessed with talented citizens that are excelling in various parts of the world.
Dr Fayemi, who was represented by the Ekiti State Commissioner for Education, Science, and Technology, Mrs. Olabimpe Aderiye, spoke on the topic “Re-engineering the Nigerian mind from white collar to blue collar enterprises.”
The Governor noted that the focus of education in Nigeria, which he said was bequeathed by the colonial administrations, and has so far been retained by successive indigenous administrations, has drastically fallen behind in the contemporary world, making it mandatory for governments at all levels, in the country to seek a more fitting system of education for today’s world.
According to him, “Today’s world requires digital, entrepreneurial and vocational skills, accompanying the conventional education, for any nation to catch up with the rest of the world, charging all stakeholders, including government, to urgently come up with the needed redirection to a system able to proffer solutions to Nigeria’s myriad of challenges.
“On a general note, education is an essential aspect of civilization and it is an impetus for individual and societal growth and development. Therefore, no contemporary nation can toy with her educational system because the educational system of a country will speak volume about her progress.
“The educational system bequeathed to us by our colonial masters and the current system of education in Nigeria is gradually being overtaken by civilization and technological advancement, manifesting in artificial intelligence, automation robotics and the likes, thereby resulting in educational policy summersault and labour market congestion, with its attendant vices.
“Arising from this standpoint, therefore, there is the urgent need to rejig our educational system to proffer solutions to the avalanche of challenges confronting us as a nation. It is high time we tackled the menace with strong determination for a paradigm shift from the white-collar to the blue-collar enterprises.”
There were also goodwill messages from the Governors of Edo, Abia, Kano, Gome and Benue States, which form the focal States for the project.
The World Bank is supporting the IDEAS Project in each of the participating states with the sum of a $200 million credit facility for implementation.
PIAK
