The National Board for Technical Education (NBTE) trained 80 Master Craftsmen for National Skills Qualifications (NSQ) in Benin.
The News Agency of Nigeria reports that the craftsmen were drawn from Fabrication and Welding, Auto mechanics, and Furniture Making ventures.
The NBTE Executive Secretary, Prof. Idris Bugaje, at the workshop in Benin, on Wednesday, said the project was supported by the World Bank.
Bugaje, who was represented by the NBTE Project Manager of IDEAS, Mr. Abbati Muhammad, said the training was to ensure that effective skill-based training and assessments were being undertaken.
According to him, the training is under the Innovation Development and Effectiveness in the Acquisition Skills Project ( IDEAS) Edo, for the South-South zone.
He said it was for the purpose of producing a competent workforce.
Bugaje said that the program would improve the capacity and effectiveness of the informal apprenticeship system in the country.
According to him, the craftsmen are stakeholders because they already have apprenticed under them and already training.
He said as such, the sensitization would raise awareness on how to structure the system of training to happen in the informal sector.
” We are always shouting: ‘No employment’, but we have jobs, nobody to do it effectively.
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“The Skill is there but nobody has set standards for what they are doing.
” The process of this training for them is to be recognized globally.
“We can even export some of them, that is where we are going. When you go abroad nobody asked how many qualifications have you but what can you do?” he said.
The representative of the World Bank, Mr. Nuruddeen Sambo-Umar, said World Bank was investing in the sensitization because of the importance of skill acquisition.
He said this was especially because they're more than 43 percent of about 14 years old young people needed to be trained with the required skills, to help them and others coming after them.
Mr. Musa Abdul, the National Apprenticeship Consultant Sensitisation Workshop, said the idea was to inform the apprentice of the Ideas Programme.
Mr. Austin Ighodaro, the project coordinator in Edo, told the participants that the program would give them an insight into how the program worked out well with evidence.
One of the participants, Mr. Edosa Igbenoba, a Motor Mechanic, said in recent times, they didn’t have apprentices, adding many in the new generation were not ready to learn.
He expressed confidence that with the sensitization program, he now knew how to convince them to learn a trade.
Another participant, Mr. Lucky Equasebodeb, the state chairman of the National Homemakers Association, said from the sensitization that he learned to enlighten the younger ones on the importance of learning a trade.
