The acquisition of
technical skills through vocational education has been described as a veritable step that would boost self-reliance and economic productivity in the country.
An educationist, Mr Emeka Uzah, stated this in his paper presented at a public lecture held recently at Erema in Ogba/Egbema/Ndoni Local Government Area of Rivers State.
In his paper titled, “Boosting Self-reliance and Economic Productivity Through Technical Education,” Mr Uzah said in all spheres of human endeavour, Nigeria as a nation would experience accelerated development if more investments were made to promote vocational education and recommended that both government and the private sector should take it as a matter of urgency to eradicate challenges frustrating technical education.
Uzah, who is a senior instructor at Government Craft Development Centre, Port Harcourt lauded the present interest being shown by the Governor Rotimi Amaechi-led administration in the state towards promoting technical education but said it was not enough for the society to leave the burden on government and urged corporate organisations, churches and individuals to redouble their efforts towards self-reliance and economic productivity through vocational training.
He said churches,  companies and even communities could develop the manpower potentials of their members by partnering with the government towards the promotion of technical education in their areas.
The educationist said most advanced nations could not have been where they are today if they only stopped at paying lip service to technical education.
“Both government and private sectors should take it as a matter of urgency to have a clear curriculum of vocational/technical studies towards skills acquisition at the secondary school levels”, he stated.
He also called for increased interest on the part of students noting that every individual in the society is blessed by one form of talent or the other and pointed out that the only way to enhance proper development of such talents was to seek ways to train and actualise them for the benefit of the individual and society at large.
According to him, Nigeria remains more as a service-orientated nation relying on finished products instead of getting more involved in the processing of the abundant resources through small and large scale industries.
He identified lack of infrastructure and inadequate training of instructors as the bane of technical education  while suggesting both local and foreign training for technical teachers to enable them boost more instructors through training-the-trainer arrangement.

Chris Oluoh