… reaffirms commitment to entrepreneurship, TVET devt

… charges on production, local manufacturing to address nation’s economic challenges

The Edo State Governor, Mr. Godwin Obaseki, has launched the Edo State Technical Talent Development Policy (EDO-TTDP) and the Edo State Work-Based Learning Programme (EDOWBLP) as part of a renewed effort to encourage entrepreneurship as well as Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) development.

Obaseki launched the policy during the annual public-private sector business roundtable on technical talent development, held at the New Festival Hall in Government House, Benin City.

The governor, who reaffirmed his government’s commitment to TVET development, noted that the key to changing the narrative and overcoming the country’s myriad of economic challenges is to focus and encourage production and manufacturing.

He said, “As a Country, we have no choice but to emphasize manufacturing and production as that will get us out of the problems we are having today. We have to produce more for ourselves and need to train more persons to achieve this.

“Since I assumed office as governor of Edo State, we have focused on one thing and one thing only - our people. We are in power because of the citizens, the children of Edo State, and our purpose is to use our resources to place our people at the frontline of development and make them globally competitive.

“When we came into office, we had to deal with the mass migration of our young people and we know these are aspirational people who want a better life for themselves and as an administration, we never condemned them but rather looked inward at their aspirations to find out how to meet their needs.

“If you create what they went to look for outside the home, they will stay at home and use their energy and brilliance to contribute their quota to the development of the State and nation.”

He continued: “We thank our partners in this journey of seven and a half years as you helped us look at the problem. We cannot talk about vocational education without talking about basic education; we had to start from the foundation. For us, in the first four and half years, our focus was on consolidating the foundation of learning, which is basic education.

“We created a foundation of basic education to prepare our children to face the future and compete favourably with their peers across the globe.

“We encouraged our students to look beyond certificates as certificates will not feed them but go through technical route to build themselves. This journey was supported by our partners.

“Fixing basic education was challenging and difficult but we had great partners, who are committed and dedicated people to champion it and today, we have been able to fix it. Edo State is one of the accelerator countries as other Africa countries are looking at what we have done to fix the basic education system.”

The governor further stated, “Our next challenge is to look at how we can create a TVET system that really works and we need help in this area now. I want to thank the German Government and GIZ who worked with us, helping us to look back at our TVET curriculum and what to do with our TVET structure.

“We were sponsored on a nine-day trip to Germany which gave us the opportunity to look through the German system to understand how their educational system is based on TVET. That has given Germany a competitive advantage today in terms of manufacturing and production. We want to work with them and see how we can do same.

“We are launching the Edo State Technical Talent Development Policy (EDO-TTDP) and Edo State Work-Based Learning Programme because this is the culmination of what we started when we came into government.

“We have re-enacted our educational system starting with our basic education. As a government, our role is to provide the framework and infrastructure but can't provide all the jobs but the private sector can. We've gone to China and worked with two polytechnics to offer technical training and scholarships to improve the quality of our learning and certification.”

He added, “As a nation of 200 million people, it’s not possible and sustainable to continue to import all that we consume and wear as most of the materials to produce what we consume is here in our country.”