The Industrial Training Fund, ITF says it has in 6 years trained over 500,000 Nigerians with the requisite skills to key into the federal government’s job and wealth creation policy direction under the National Development Plan, NDP.
The Director General of the Fund, Joseph Ari stated this in Abuja while addressing a top management team from LEADERSHIP Group Limited who paid him a courtesy visit at his office, where he was presented with the letter for the LEADERSHIP of Public-Service Person of the Year 2022.
Ari who described the LEADERSHIP Award bestowed on him as a great honour commended the management of LEADERSHIP for finding him worthy among those to be recognised as public persons for the year 2022.
“For me, I would like to dedicate this award to the Nigerian people for it is on their behalf that I’m holding in trust the responsibilities of running the affairs of ITF, a parastatal under the aegis of Federal Ministry of Industry, Trade and Investment, charged with the responsibility to equip as many Nigerians as possible with the requisite skills for employability and entrepreneurship.”
He stressed the need for the country to embrace skills acquisition to enhance development, create jobs and attract foreign direct investments.
According to Ari “The good thing about Nigeria is that our population is made up of the youth. Many nations of the world are aged in population but we have a young vibrant population. About 60% of our population consists of the youth and so if we have a skilled population, we can even export skills out.
“Skills have come to be known as the currency of the 21st century” he said.
The ITF boss disclosed that the Fund in 2023 will introduce 35 trade areas that are interventionist in nature ranging from plumbing and fabrication, pipe fitting, oil and gas, POP and so on.
“If we take one of the intervention programmes, for example, the National Industrial Skills Development Programme, then select 300 persons to be trained per state multiplied by 37 states including the FCT, we will have about 11,100 to be trained in one trade area. Imagine what it would be multiplied by 35 intervention programmes.”
Recognition award
The vice chairman, of LEADERSHIP Group Limited, Mr Mike Okpere who leads the team explained that the LEADERSHIP 2022 Award, scheduled for January 31, 2023 in Abuja is to recognise persons who attained positions of responsibility and doing remarkable things in public service.
“These awards are given to deserving persons who have attained positions of height and achieved excellence in their outputs. For the 2022 Award, we found it necessary and decided that three persons deserved to be given the LEADERSHIP Public Service Persons of the Year 2022. We are proud to say that Sir Joseph Ari, the DG-ITF is one of those persons,” he said.
Emmanuel Ukoh
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