By Abbanobi-Eku Onyekachi
The Federal Government (FG) of Nigeria says it is creating a national job centre to match the the available vacancies in the industries and businesses, with the available talent pool.
Minister of Industry, Trade and Investment, Mrs Doris Anite – Uzoka made the disclosure in a statement at her Ministry’s annual press briefing organized on Friday by the Federal Ministry of Information at Radio House, Abuja the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).
One such initiative, according to her is the Skill – Up Program Artisans (SUPA) to be led by an agency of the Ministry, the Industrial Training Fund (ITF). The programme will empower artisans with tech-enabled skills training, licensing, access to essential toolkits, and promoting industry-standard excellence.
SUPA, she went on, will addresses the skills deficiency among artisans and standardizes artisanal practice, even as she added that the programme would ensure the availability of a skilled workforce for domestic industries, thereby reducing labour import dependency. She said that the job centres across the country would train and equip Nigerians to be job-ready.
Informing that over two years, the aim of the programme was to empower 10 million hard-working Nigerians, and reflects the government’s commitment to promoting economic development and improving citizens’ standard of living, and job creation, the Minister however added that in furtherance of job-creation, skills development, and National Talent Export Programme (NATEP) they launched was to create one million jobs, including talent exchange cum export, business process outsourcing, and job outsourcing.
Informing that the Ministry is set to launch the National Trade Intelligence Unit (NTIU) that will be a national coordinator and focal point for all trade related data and information in Nigeria, the Minister had this to say: “The office is set to leverage world class technology, such as Artificial Intelligence, the Internet of Things, Big – Data to provide Nigeria with the ability to predict global market trends that will enhance Nigeria’s local and global trading capacities thereby significantly enhancing and the ease of doing business in Nigeria, in line with Mr President’s 8 Point Agenda.”
The Minister however stated categorically that it would play a key role in the delivery of President Bola Tinubu’s eight-point agenda four of economic growth and job creation; access to capital; improving the playing field on which people and particularly companies operate and and; ending poverty, saying that out of the 8-point agenda are directly linked to the ministry.
