An Associate Professor at the Ignatius Ajuru University of Education (IAUOE). Rumuolumeni,  Rivers State ,Isaac Ogundu has called on the State Government to urgently declare a state of emergency on technical and vocational education as a recipe for curbing crimes in the state.
Ogundu also canvassed for an establishment of vocational education board  in the state as well as establishing vocational colleges in the 23 local government areas of the state
The associate professor who, is also the Acting Head of Technical Education at IAUOE made this call in an interview with journalists at the just concluded 4th edition of the  annual conference organised by Faculty of Technical Education  of  the university with the theme “Promoting Innovation and Research Through Vocational Skills Acquisition for Sustainable Development” held at the Post Graduate Hall recently.
According to him the increasing spate of crisis and social unrest going on in the state and other parts of the country gave rise to the theme of this year’s conference.
He stated that there was an urgent need for education policy makers to institutionalise the teaching of skills in the nation’s education curriculum  in order to catch the youth and engage them with skills that would make them contribute to the economy of the state.
“There should be constitution of vocational education board in the state and each local government should have vocational education where people’s skills will be developed and they acquire new ones,”he added.
Earlier, the  vice chancellor of the university, Prof Ozo _Mercury Ndimele while declaring the conference open said the vision of the present management of the institution was to ensure that every student acquire a skill that will make them self dependent and employer of labour at the completion of their course of study at the university.
Represented by  Dr Stephen Kalagbor, the Head of St John’s Campus, the vice chancellor said the university was doing well in areas of research .
He urged participants at the one day conference to maximise the opportunity provided by the conference to help the society in solving the problem of social disorder that is  ravaging the nation at the moment through development of various skills that will make people to become self reliant.  .
Our correspondent who attended the conference reports that participants were drawn from both academic and non academic.