NIGERIA. Kaduna State: The high incidence of unemployed graduates and out-of-school children in Nigeria has been blamed for the country’s persistent insecurity. This was stated during the annual meeting of the Science and Technology Forum (STF) in Kaduna State by Professor Idris Muhammad Bugaje, Executive Secretary of the National Board for Technical Education (NBTE).
Bugaje added that Nigeria has around 90 million unemployed youths and over 10 million out-of-school-children in which the largest percentage of them are Almajeris.
“High rate of unemployment was largely responsible for the security challenges bedeviling the country,” he added.
As a result, Bugaje asked the federal and state governments to find a long-term solution by involving adolescents in skill acquisition and other trades, which will assist to alleviate the catastrophic unemployment situation.
“Many graduates of Universities and polytechnics in Nigeria are roaming the streets unemployed not because they don’t have the certificate or what it takes to be employed, but lack of job opportunity and this has added to the excallating insecurity problems of the country,” Bugaje noted.
“As it is now, millions of Nigerians are graduating yearly and there are not enough jobs for them as such the unemployment rate is drastically increasing, which has left many hopeless.”
Bugaje, on the other hand, stated that the NBTE is making it mandatory for all high learning institutions in the country to begin offering Technical Vocational Education Training (TVET) in order to allow graduates to graduate with skills, which will help to alleviate the country’s unemployment crisis.
To act as one of the answers to unemployment, the government must also pay enough attention by investing more in schools that offer TVET.
NBTE was founded by a group of Nigerian scientists and engineers about 20 years ago to aid in the advancement of science and technology for the development of Nigerian society.
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