The education ministry says it is aggressively tackling the skill deficit in Nigeria, with over 100,000 undergoing training in its TVET initiative.
Folasade Boriowo, the ministry’s press director, was addressing media discourse around foreign technical expertise being hired for large-scale industrial projects in Nigeria.
The ministry said the renewed public discourse reinforces the urgency of ongoing reforms under current administration.
Boriowo stated that Nigeria’s Technical and Vocational Education and Training has been positioned as a national priority to drive sustainable development.
She said the TVET initiative has enrolled an initial batch of over 100,000 Nigerians in more than 1,600 technical and vocational training programmes across the country.
These programmes, she said, are focused on priority skills such as industrial mechanics, electrical installation, welding, mechatronics, solar PV installation, compressed natural gas (CNG) conversion, and ICT.
The ministry said it plans to enrol the first cohort of 250,000 students within the next two to three months, with an ambitious target of training over one million young Nigerians with industry-relevant skills within the next two years to meet local and global demands.
Training curricula are designed in collaboration with industry to ensure graduates are employable.
Boriowo said technical institutions are being revitalised through equipment deployment and instructor capacity development, with quality assurance assessors deployed nationwide.
She said the federal government is providing structured stipends, with the first tranche of payments already released to training centres, to support beneficiaries.
The ministry added that it is leveraging international partnerships for curriculum modernisation and instructor training, which it says are focused on long-term capacity building and knowledge transfer, “not the substitution of Nigerian labour.”
The education ministry, Boriowo said, is committed to building a skills-driven economy where Nigerians are equipped to operate, maintain, and expand the nation’s industries.
