Education that can’t create jobs is useless –Ngige

The Minister of Labour and Employment, Dr Chris Ngige, says education that is not directed towards job creation is useless.

Ngige, therefore, said there was a need for schools to revise their current curricular to reflect modern challenges and development, according to a statement by the Director of Press at the Ministry of Labour, Samuel Olowookere.

The minister said this in Abuja on Tuesday while addressing a breakfast session of the ongoing National Economic Summit (#24) in Abuja with the theme, ‘Multi-Sectoral Roundtable on Job Creation and Skills Development in Nigeria’.

He said, “With a working population of over 80 million, the majority of who are unemployed, we have to do something radical, the narrative must change. School curriculum must change to include new and emerging skills. Education is power but it is useless when it is not in the right direction. We, therefore, must collaborate to solve this problem.”

The minister emphasised the need for a paradigm shift in approach to job creation as the current efforts might not be sufficient to create the jobs needed to gainfully engage over 80 million people.

In his remarks, the Executive Secretary of the National Universities Commission, Prof. Abubakar Rasheed, expressed the readiness of the commission to partner with organisations and groups to transit Nigeria into a knowledge-based society, thereby facilitating a knowledgeable economy.

Earlier, in his remarks, the Chief Executive Officer of the Nigerian Economic Summit Group, Mr Laoye Jaiyeola, stated that individual efforts would not produce the much-needed result on job creation as each organisation was doing something in bits and pieces.

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