The Federal Government is set to offer six months of free training to youths to fill two million job vacancies.
President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has also approved N120 billion to revive technical education.
Minister of Education, Dr Tunji Alausa, spoke during the third Ministerial Press Briefing, organised by Minister of Information and National Orientation Mohammed Idris in Abuja.
Minister of Aviation and Aerospace Development, Festus Keyamo, also gave an account of his stewardship.
Alausa said: “We have almost N120 billion and the President has approved it for us to move this agenda forward.
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“This programme will be launched probably in the month of May.
“Today, based on UNESCO data, there are 650,000 vacancies in software development methodologies, about 280,000 vacancies in cyber security, and about 160,000 vacancies in IT automation.
“Another 150,000 vacancies in AI and machine learning, about 120,000 vacancies in cloud computing, and about 60,000 vacancies worldwide in national language processing.
“Add that together, we have almost two million job vacancies out there.
“So, what we’re doing with Digital Training Academy is working with trainers that will offer six- months of training to young engineers.
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“We, as a government, will pay for their internet services, pay for their certification- Cisco certification, End of Career certification, and Google certification.”
Alausa said the strategy would give Nigerians new digital skills needed to stand out in the world.
He added that the training would be launched on or before June.
The minister said the Federal Ministry of Education was putting measures to encourage Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) to meet the areas of needs.
He said this would be done through the Digital Training Academy (DTA) to give students skills in service industries.
Alausa reiterated the commitment of the government to return 10 million out-of-school children to the classrooms.
He said the ministry was working on a new strategy to increase access, improve quality and enhance education systems for foundational learning.
Alausa said between now and 2027, the government will reconstruct 195,000 classrooms across the nation.
“With regards to infrastructure, between now and 2027, we will need to raise 195,000 classrooms across the nation.
“We will install 28,000 toilets, and 22,900 boreholes across other schools in the country.
“We will construct about 7,000 new classrooms and provide learning and teaching materials by organising 103 million textbooks,” he said.
Alausa hinged the current proliferation of universities on the increasing pressure being mounted by lawmakers.
He said almost 200 bills were pending in the National Assembly for the creation of universities.
Alausa explained that renewing the capacities of existing institutions was more important than establishing new ones.
According to him, there is no need to put pressure on the president to establish new universities.
“We must focus on our capacities. We need to stop this from happening. There’s so much pressure on the president.
“We have to at least be sensitive to it as well. They (lawmakers) are passing a lot of bills.
“Today, there are almost 200 bills in the National Assembly. We can’t continue this.
“Even though we have a lot of them, the capacity for a university to admit is not there.
“What we need to do now is to rebuild the capacities so that we can offer more viable courses to our citizens,” he said.
“If you look at the entire enrollment together, the one per cent of private universities account for just 7.5 per cent of total undergraduate enrollment.
“The total number of undergraduate enrollment today is just about 875,000, which is at least fairly low.
“We have universities with less than 1,000 undergraduate students, and there’s this intense demand for more universities to be opened.
“We have to stop that,” he said.
He added that several key proposals had been put forward to address education sector challenges.
He added that the Tinubu Administration has committed N40 billion to the abandoned National Library of Nigeria project.
The minister said work on the library project would soon commence, adding that this would support academic and research needs.
Others who attended the briefing include Special Adviser on Information and Strategy to the President, Mr. Bayo Onanuga; Special Adviser on Public Communication and Orientation, Mr. Sunday Dare, and Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media, Publicity and Special Duties, Mr. Tunde Rahaman.
Heads of agencies in the Ministry of Information and National Orientation – News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), Nigerian Television Authority (NTA), Voice of Nigeria (VON), National Orientation Agency (NOA) and Federal Radio Cooperation of Nigeria (FRCN) – were also there.
Drop in airfares likely, says Keyamo
Also at the briefing yesterday, Minister of Aviation and Aerospace Development, Festus Keyamo (SAN), said a drop in airfares was likely soon.
He also said the Federal Government would roll out measures to curb illegal charter operations.
According to Keyamo, the government lost billions of naira to the illegal charter operations which date back 40 years.
Part of the reforms is to mandate regulators to publish the names of airlines that are approved to fly, and proper documentation of those on board the chartered flights.
He also said the control tower would not clear any flight for takeoff without proper identification of the crew members and passengers.
On the high cost of tickets, Keyamo said: “We have domestic tickets and we have international tickets.
“I talked about domestic tickets and the fact that we don’t have access to lease aircraft at very cheap costs.
“We only can go for the very expensive option of leasing aircraft or buying aircraft.
“We are addressing that and we are going to see results very soon with the Cape Town Convention and the Dublin Conference we went to.
“The deals are coming in, so we’ll see results there.
“But the international flights, one of the major reasons they used to give is that their monies were trapped in Nigeria.
“When we came to office, there were airlines that had a three-year backlog of funds trapped in Nigeria.
“When their agents sell tickets in naira, it is evacuated and dropped in the CBN, which will get the dollar equivalent and repatriate.
“That is how it is done so that the tickets will be sold in naira.
“So all of these tickets were sold in naira for three years plus, but the CBN had no liquidity, no dollar equivalent to send to these foreign airlines. So the funds were trapped.
“Because of the deft policies of this government on the withdrawal of subsidy and floating of naira, liquidity began to rise and that’s why I was thanking the President for the unusual attention he paid to aviation.”
As part of measures to boost the economy of the country and encourage local operators, the minister said plans are ongoing to introduce the FlyNigeria Act initiative.
“The Fly Nigeria Act will mandate the prioritisation of Nigerian flag carriers for government-funded travel, a bold move to support local airlines and stimulate economic growth.
“We have 13 active private airlines in Nigeria and there is a need to support local airlines by making policies to support their growth,” he said.
The Nation
