Professor Idris Bugaje is the Executive Secretary of the National Board for Technical Education (NBTE). He spoke at the monthly education dialogue organised by the Education Writers’ Association of Nigeria (EWAN) on the new TVET initiative and the rejuvenated technical colleges, among others. The excerpts is curled from the Daily Independent Newspaper.
What is the new TVET programme all about?
Anytime you hear renewed hope, my understanding is that hope was dashed in the past. That’s why the government is trying to renew the hope. The new TVET initiative of the Federal Ministry of Education is one major pillar of this government. The government has made TVET the fourth pillar. It operates under the Nigerian Skills Acquisition Framework.
The current initiative is meant to give young people the opportunity to learn skills that can help them meet the demand of the industry in Nigeria in areas like construction, transportation, manufacturing and others, and enable them to get jobs outside the borders of Nigeria. So, that is one major component.
The other part of the component is also to rejuvenate the technical colleges. Today in Nigeria, there are 129 technical colleges, federal, state, and private against over 15,000 senior secondary schools. The proportion is abysmally low, less than one per cent.
TVET has witnessed poor attention; thus recording very poor turnout. With this new initiative, there is hope that more enrolments would follow, more admissions offered, and more young people opt to go to technical colleges for training.
Thirty-eight federal technical colleges are undergoing a rebranding. In the past, we used to have federal science and technical colleges made up of 90 per cent science students with just 10 per cent for technical colleges.
Those who are already in the system will be allowed to graduate. However, from this year, there should be no more intake of the science component, only the technical component.
Those who are already in the system would be allowed to graduate, but from this year onward, there would be no more intakes for science components in the colleges as TVET is designed to run in components. Every student will now be running technical programmes, under the supervision of the National Business and Technical Examinations Board (NABTEB).
What are these components?
It is the technical college that the government has rebranded into TVET 1, TVET 2 and TVET 3, which are equivalent to SS1, SS2 and SS3. Students will now be receiving a monthly stipend, free accommodation and free feeding. Their industrial attachments will also be paid for because skills training cannot be done in classrooms and workshops alone; you must go and practise in real life situations. So that is one component. We hope that by the time technical courses are repackaged, there will be an increase in admissions; parents will demand more colleges and probably, the states will start converting conventional secondary schools into technical colleges.
How will the TVET graduates further their education?
Technical colleges are meant to feed polytechnic; it is the absence of products of technical colleges that polytechnic are taking inputs from senior secondary schools.
In the 60s and early 70s, technical colleges were feeding the polytechnic. That opportunity shall be recreated by God’s grace through this intervention. That is one component.
The second component is what is called Master 6. It is a six-month training course to be offered in skills centres accredited by NBTE. We have almost 800 of them already accredited, and the number keeps increasing, but our target is to move it to 1,000 in a few weeks.
Thus, those skills training centres are where young people will get training. Those who have uploaded their data will be assigned to some of these training centres for a six-month training. The students will make their choices on the type of skills they want to earn and once the centre they choose is offering such skills, they will be assigned by the Nigerian Education Loan Fund (NELFUND).
During the training sessions, they will be paid a monthly stipend; which was earlier a sum of N45,000, but now it has been reduced to N22,500.
The tuition fee would be paid up to a maximum amount that hasn’t been decided, but probably around N150,000 to N180,000 for the six months, and they will equally pay for certification.
This is because in skills training, we don’t allow the institution to issue the certificate.
What are the required qualifications?
You don’t need to have any qualification to go to master six, even if you don’t know A, B, C, D, E, even if it is the Arabic alphabet that you know or you are an almajiri or out of school child, or a young person who doesn’t have anything to do, you can go and register, you can upload your information.
The only requirement is a National Identification Number (NIN). Once you have NIN, you will be assigned to any of those skills training centres, and you’ll get training in your chosen area of skill. That is for master six.
What is Master 12 about, and what is the age limit?
Then there is master 12. Master 12 is limited to vocational enterprise institutions. Most of them are private sector vocational institutions accredited by NBTE. We have about 84 of them across the country. Of course, not all of them are fully accredited.
Those that are fully accredited are also entitled to take students for 12 months. The only thing is that those to be admitted in vocational enterprise institutions are young Nigerians of age 15, normally around the age of 15, adolescents, not any person of any age.
For the skills training centre under Master Six, it is open to all. However, for Master 12, you have to be within the age of adolescence; about 15, and then you also have a NIN.
What is the take-off date?
We are hopeful that the technical college component will take off in September. These other two, master six and master 12, will take off in July. TVET is being recreated, and we are going to see a lot of improvements in the system so that Nigeria will stop importing skilled labour.
At the moment, we import from Francophone countries in West Africa. They are the ones doing the tiling, the finishing, the POP and a lot of other services in the construction sites across Nigeria.
If you go to Maiduguri, Chadians cross into Nigeria to provide services because Francophone TVET is better than Anglophone TVET over the years. We were almost at the same level of independence, but they are now doing much better than we are. That narrative is going to change.
We’ll also stop the importation of artisan labour for different infrastructural projects such as the expansion of the railway, the gas pipeline, the Dangote refinery, the oil and gas sector, underwater welding, and the offshore/ onshore services that are serviced by Asians across Nigeria.
What happens if there is no accredited Vocational Enterprise Institution (VEI) within an applicant’s state?
If that is the case, I will recommend that the applicant go to the skills training centres. Of course, the VEI will give a longer training up to the Master’s 12 level, but that can only be offered by the accredited VEIs. However, out of 84 VEIs across the country, just half have been accredited. Only accredited VEIs are allowed to participate in this intervention.
Are there any registration deadlines and submission requirements?
The portal is not closed yet; it will probably close early this month. For an application to be successfully submitted the applicant’s NIN and BVN must synchronise; otherwise, it will be rejected.
What is the sustainability plan for the initiative?
At the moment, the Minister of Education, Tunji Alausa, is sourcing funds from the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFUND) for NELFUND to manage the promised payments, though temporarily. The long-term arrangement is an executive bill that is being prepared to establish what is called a National Skills Fund (NSF). The NSF will fund the new TVET initiative, and it will also fund all other skills development initiatives across the different MDAs and different sectors of the economy. This will be a very sustainable way of funding this programme beyond the tenure of this administration.
What modalities are in place to access the short, medium, and long-term plans?
The programme will be monitored physically and electronically. As I said earlier, TETFUND will give NELFUND a sum of N100 billion for the programme in the first year as a takeoff fund but in subsequent years, NSF is going to be the funding agency. Although there will be other projects to fund along the way. Ideally, the Industrial Training Fund (ITF) should have been converted to the Skills Training Fund but the ITF is well-entrenched, so, the National Council on Skills has decided that instead of upgrading or converting ITF to a Skills Training Fund, it is better to just create it afresh so that funding can come from ITF, TETFUND, NASENI, among others. It will now be used to support other interventions. Nigeria must strive to make skills an important currency of its economy.
How will the initiative contribute to Nigeria’s economy?
Countries are leveraging skills to earn foreign exchange. Bangladesh has 11.5 million workers in the Middle East; India has over 50 million workers across the world. Nigerians can do the same. We have the most youthful population in the world. 65 per cent of Nigerians are made up of young people who are below the age of 25. So, the national skill fund is going to drive that agenda and other skills interventions to upskill Nigerian youth so that they can easily get jobs locally and globally.
