The Industrial Training Fund, (ITF) has said it trained over 500,000 Nigerians with necessary skills to take advantage of Federal Government jobs and wealth creation under the National Development Plan (NDP)

This is even as the Fund has upbeat it’s skills acquisition in 2023 by introducing 35 trade areas for the training of Nigerians.

The Director General of the Industrial Training Fund, Sir Joseph Ari said this at the weekend when he played host to the management team from Leadership Newpapers Group Limited who presented him with Public-Service Person of the Year 2022 award.

Ari emphasized the need for the country to prioritise skills acquisition which has the tendencies of creating multiple jobs while also attracting foreign direct investments.

He said: “About 60% of our population consists of the youth and so if we have a skilled population, we can even export skills out as it now the currency of the 21st century

“For instance, take National Industrial Skills Development Programme, then select 300 persons to be trained per state multiplied by 37 states including the FCT, we will have about 11,100 to be trained in one trade area. So it would be multiplied by 35 intervention programmes.” he said.

Ari further said its new survey has identified more areas of focused in imparting skills to unemployed Nigerians.

“We have also made in submission to government that there are four areas we need to pay attention to, and these came about as a result of the survey we carried out with the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation.

“We carried a skills gap survey, we wanted to know what are the gaps that exists so we bring in our huge population to fill into those.

“We came up with four critical areas. These are construction, agriculture, the services industry and the ICT. The services industry for example is very huge in value chain. And we said with this development , you can fill in the gaps that exist,” Ari, said.

The Vice Chairman, LEADERSHIP Group Limited, Mr Mike Okpere said the LEADERSHIP 2022 Award, was given to only well deserving individuals and the Director General of ITF has fulfilled all the requirements in public service.

He said, “These awards are given to deserving persons who have attained positions of height and achieved excellence in their outputs.