The Minister of State for Mines and Steel Development, Dr Uchechukwu Ogah, has said that Nigeria doesn’t need “grammar schools” again.
He said what the country needed for rapid growth and development were skill acquisition institutions.
He stated this during a visit to the Metallurgical Training Institute, Onitsha, Anambra State.
He described the institute as critical for national growth and development.
Ogah said the Federal Government had concluded arrangements to regularise the legal framework for the effective operation of the institute.
He maintained that the ministry of mines and steel development would optimise its focus on the institution to enable it to achieve the goal it had set out to achieve, which is imparting skills.
He said, “We are 60 per cent done with the regulatory framework for the institute; the bill has been approved by the Federal Executive Council and will soon be presented to the National Assembly.
“The purpose of MTI is to train people in skill acquisitions and not necessarily to award certificate because what the
the country needs today is a skill-based education.
“The ministry wants to see how it can build on the foundation that has been laid so that when one is done with the
the institute he/she can work in any institution in the country.
“My ministry is ready and capable of ensuring that the school is given the necessary support to make sure it competes
favourable with any other schools of its kind around the world.
“In the next year, there will be a great transformation in the institute because the ministry would expose it, internationally.”
Speaking, the Acting Director /Chief Executive of the institute, Biakolo Alisigwe, thanked the minister for visiting, describing the minister’s presence as a morale booster and an open
testimony of his zeal to take the institute to next level.
She said the school runs a modular programme of study which is 80 per cent practical and 20 per cent theory in six specialised courses of Industrial electrical engineering, Mechanical maintenance engineering, Instrumentation and control system engineering, Heavy mobile equipment maintenances engineering, Steel fabrication and welding engineering; and Industrial metallurgy and foundry engineering.
Punch
