The federal government has advised parents to encourage their children to embrace technical and vocational education so as to reduce the unemployment rate in the country.
The Permanent Secretary Federal Ministry of Education, Andrew David Adejo, made the appeal at a two day retreat for the new rectors and other principal officers of polytechnics and colleges of technology in Nigeria to reduce pressure being mounted on university education.
Speaking on incessant industrial action in tertiary institutions in the country, the permanent secretary said with the government addressing workers’ salary issues, there won’t be rampant industrial again.
“I think we’ve gotten beyond strikes in this country now. Government is addressing everything. The unions don’t just wake up again and say they’re going on strike so long the government is addressing their needs which the government is doing now. We’ve gone beyond strikes,” he said.
According to him, the multi-faceted challenges that confront polytechnics and the entire tertiary education in Nigeria are also all federal government institutions, saying it requires governance structure with different layers of responsibility, hence the need for the retreat.
The permanent said, “If you take a survey around here now, people that have children, ask them, after secondary school, what do your children want to do? Close to 90% would say they want to go to the university.
“Very few will say they want to go and learn handcrafts or entrepreneurship of skills. The market responds to a demand and the demands have to be created for Nigerians who want to go and be doing things that give them more readily available opportunities to make their own money than sitting down and be waiting for somebody somewhere to dictate how you make money.”
Speaking earlier, chairman of the Committee of Federal Polytechnic Rectors, Dr Yahaya Muhammad Bande said the programme was to equip principal officers of the polytechnics and other technical and vocational education and training institutions with administrative techniques and skills that would improve quality teaching, research and development in the sector.
