The National Centre for Technology Management (NACETEM) says its academy will train one million workers in various skills relevant to Nigeria’s socioeconomic development.
Dr Olushola Odusanya, Director-General of NACETEM, announced this on Tuesday during an interview in Abuja.
Odusanya said the skills training and certification for middle- and high-level manpower would be held for five years.
NACETEM Academy was created within the first year of President Bola Tinubu’s administration to provide online training through collaborations with private sector firms.
The director-general said that the skills training and certification would be qualitative and relevant to the country’s socio-economic development.
“NACETEM Academy is a body created for training. It is a massive online training opportunity made possible through collaborations with private sector firms.
“It is a potential global training and certification programme, as we expect people to join from all over the world,” he said.
Odusanya said that Nigeria, with a thriving youthful population, has a massive workforce.
“Our aim is to ensure that this massive workforce is connected with skills.”
The director-general said that, since he came on board, he has ensured that the beneficiaries have a global certification backed by skills training.
He said that there was a huge global demand for ICT knowledge as well as ICT jobs, but regrettably, Nigeria has a huge deficit of ICT-skilled workers.
“To bridge this deficit, NACETEM, in collaboration with Comits Nig Ltd., applied and became a Certiport training centre. Certiport Authorised Testing Centre is a global certification institution.”
“We entered into an MoU with Comits to carry out the training of one million people within five years.
“The training is not free. There are basic minimum qualifications required from trainees in more than 162 countries around the world.
“Three certificates are involved in digital literacy, communication skills for business communications collaborations, and competitiveness and entrepreneurship for small businesses,” Ogunsanya said.
The NACETEM boss identified relevant ICT skills such as computing and software development, artificial intelligence, database management, and analytics as some of the basic project management skills critical to Nigeria.
“There were also ICT certifications for businesses and lawyers, software for accountants, and skills such as entrepreneurship, digital marketing, associate Microsoft Office specialists, and educators, among others.
“At the end of the day, the NACETEM academy turns out to be a finishing school for those who already had degrees but needed this global certification to move across the world,” he said.
He noted that MoUs were signed with the Federal University of Technology, Minna, in the presence of Chief Uche Nnaji, Minister of Innovation, Science, and Technology.
“This is to ensure that all the certificates that we will be issued are from the recognised university.”
NAN
