The Director General and Chief Executive Industrial Training Fund (ITF), Stephen Ari has said Nigeria could not attain the goal in industrialization without adequate middle level manpower.
Ari stated this in Yenagoa during the second flagging ceremony of industrial revolution training scheme for 500 Bayelsa youths on different trades. The trades include aluminum fabrications, garment making, GSM repairs, poultry and snail farming.
Ari who was represented at the ceremony by the Director of Training and Compliance, Mr Abdulrasag Adeniran said the industrial giant of the world couldn’t have been without skill and technology.
He said his department was ready to provide the missing link in the Nigeria labour market by not only training youths for the relevant manpower needed in technology but also help the unemployed became self sufficient.
He said Nigeria could not afford to be left out in the industrial revolution going on, hence the need to diversified in approaching the next level.
He stated that since the establishment of the fund in early 70s, thousands of Nigeria youths had been trained, most of them gainfully employed and others are self employed and managing their individual establishments.
“For ITF to more effective in its task of finding short and long term solution to problems of unemployment, there is need for collaboration and partnership from multinational firms and government of different states of Nigeria, the director said.
“When this is done, we would have found solution to unemployment and poverty in our society”.
He thanked the Bayelsa government for its partnership with ITF, advising the participants to make judicious use of the opportunity offered to them by the Programme.
In his speech, the Deputy Governor of Bayelsa State, Retired Admiral John Jonah commentded the initiators of the programme and promised that government would ensure that the trainees were giving necessary supports.
Jonah said, it has always be the policy if government to ensure that the youths of the state were giving opportunity to excel in their different choosing profession, advising them to be serious with their training, pointing out that “days are are gone when people site idly gossiping about and expect free money. From government”.
