Augustine Okezie
The federal government has reiterated its commitment towards promoting vocational and technical training as part of measures to enhance “product innovation, exhibition and commercialisation.”
The Supervising Minister of Education, Nyesom Wike, gave the assurance yesterday in Abuja during the 2013 National Students’ Vocational Skills Competition.
He said the nation “can only address its socio-economic challenges by equipping her youths and adults with the best and latest skills provided by technicaland vocational education training.”
Wike stressed that the national competition organised for all science and technical colleges in the country was aimed at promoting vocational education, professional pride and to develop hidden talents amongst the of students.
According to him, “the National Students’ Vocational Skills Competition was a major way to strategically reposition the nation’s economy for greater outcomes.”
In another development, the Colleges of Education Academic Staff Union (COEASU) has said that it had concluded plans to declare hunger strike, and organise mass protests across the country in response to the neglect of its 10-week-old strike.
The Union had called on government to release N30 billion to address its demand for improved and meaningful funding and the uplifting of the capacities of the colleges of education systems.
Other demands by COEASU included the release of the long overdue White Paper of the 2012 Presidential Visitation Panels to federal colleges of education; the provision of adequate infrastructure; accreditation of courses in the colleges of education, and the approval of dual mode of staff emoluments for colleges of education, amongst others.
