The Executive Secretary, Nigerian Tertiary Education Trust Fund, TETFund, Arc. Sonny Echono has said that the institution is deliberately refocusing its intervention activities to support learning outcomes and employability of Nigerian tertiary education graduates.
Arc Echono disclosed this in his welcome address while declaring open a two day National Employability Programme Implementation Support Workshop in on Wednesday in Abuja, noting that Nigeria is confronted with the challenges of high unemployment, particularly youth unemployment which is at an all-time high in the country.
According to the ES, the aligning of TETFund’s intervention activities to meet Nigeria’s changing needs, strengthening education delivery towards fostering an entrepreneurship culture are some of the best ways for unleashing the enormous youth potential, while addressing unemployment and other societal problems growing in the economy.
“It is our belief that strengthening entrepreneurship education and training are crucial in this regard,” said Echono.
He further revealed that the Fund is in the process of establishing entrepreneurship and innovation hubs in beneficiary institutions across the six geo-political zones of the country, to link them with industry with a view to enhance entrepreneurship development, innovation and employability in line with contemporary global best practices.
These interventions, Echono said would help promote the transformation of beneficiary institutions into catalysts for knowledge creation and organizing the translation of knowledge into usable products and services for addressing societal problems.
“All these efforts are geared towards facilitating the link between Research, Development, and Innovation with the processes of promoting and enhancing entrepreneurship development to ensure graduate employability for national development. The aim is to enable Nigerian tertiary institutions serve as catalysts for regional and national economic development by unlocking the knowledge potential to solve critical societal challenges.
“The Implementation Support Workshop for which we are all gathered here today, marks the commencement of the second phase of the employability programmes, focusing on the implementation of the recommendations from the benchmarking exercise and capacity building in the five employability dimensions which the IFC Vitae instrument examined,” explained Echono.
The head of Global Lead, Education And Employability Advisory Manufacturing, Agribusiness And Services Department, IFC, Dina Nicholas, in her presentation stated that the IFC would be monitoring the data to get the numbers of graduates in each institutions to understand which of them is producing qualified and employable graduates and where any lagging institutions requires further support to help improve the employability of their students.
Similarly, the managing director Cognitive advisory, Mr Tope Toogun, said there has been several attempts at research programmes and studies aimed at curbing graduates unemployment in Nigeria, there hasn’t been any action towards implementing the findings.
IFC’s Dina Nicholas, further urged that reports generated from the programme should not abandoned, but be employed to improve the program that may be having more problem in placing their students in terms of employability.
