The Abandoned Goldmine

As Nigeria seeks to become a country to be reckoned with, Solomon Elusoji writes that the government has to pay more attention to technological development, using its technical and vocational colleges.His pockmarked visage was a plaster of taciturnity. His eyes were shifty and romanced the floor, unable, or rather unwilling to meet another pair of eyes.He didn’t possess a winning smile or a charismatic ambience that fills a room. But lying at his feet was a fairly large prototype of a car run on batteries.The realism of the prototype was engaging and interesting, and the design was neat. “My name is Enos Akpomiemie,” he said, “and I am a student of Government Technical College, Ikotun.”Enos’s big dream is to make a car that runs on solar energy. From an early age, he has worked assiduously with machines, opening and closing, repairing and damaging. He has made fans and cars from materials he found in the dustbin, and sometimes he sources his components from electricians working near his house. Although he appeared to be a boy of few words, Enos told THISDAY that he believes “nothing is impossible if he has the tools to work with.”

Government Technical College Ikotun, is one of the few colleges in Lagos State dedicated to vocational and educational training, and is under the administration of the Lagos State Technical and Vocational Education Board (LASTVEB). On the 13th of July, 2009, the Governor of Lagos State, Babatunde Fashola, established LASTVEB in a bid to provide opportunities that will empower youths, encourage them to be self reliant and enable them to create employment for others.

The objectives of the board are to stimulate and encourage technical and vocational education not only as a basis for creating early technical awareness, but also to provide suitable orientation for further learning, entrepreneurship and employment; be responsible for efficient management and the establishment of technical and vocational education at the post primary School level; to ensure and collaborate with a wide range of partners and stakeholders to attract additional resources,
information and investments so as to improve the quality of technical and vocational education in the State.

“Many are beginning to realise today that vocational and technical education is parallel if not better than orthodox education. One of the reasons for unemployment was that our kids have no skills and our brothers from other West African countries take the available jobs,” Fashola has said.

However, when THISDAY visited the technical college at Ikotun, the general consensus was that more still needs to be done to provide motivation for naturally skilled students like Enos.

The Head of Section, Motor vehicle Mechanics at the school, Adeosun Olumuyiwa, noted that the right motivation and encouragement will give students like Enos a good template to achieve greatness. He said: “He is one of my students here and he’s in tech 2, motor-vehicle mechanics section. He’s doing fine, and he is a boy that, if given the opportunity, can improve on most of the things that he’s trying to do concerning invention in motor-vehicles. He needs encouragement from the government, or an individual, or from a corporate body that can help him improve on this little innovation that he’s involved in.

“The Lagos State government is trying; but the only thing we are appealing for is more attention to technical education, especially those of us at the extreme end of the state. We have materials in terms of human resources, but the major thing is that we need the infrastructure that will help us to give these students more knowledge.”
One of the School Counsellors, Osagbemi Oluyemisi said Enos has a very bright potential. She remarked: “I have discovered that any time we call for Jet Club members, he is always one of the first set of people that show up. And he’s always saying that he has something to invent – he wants to build a car, he wants to do this, he wants to do that. So I feel if he’s given an opportunity, and get people to push him up, he will get to the peak of his ability; and we will be able to get the best out of him.
“When he showed me one of his vehicles, which he hasn’t been able to complete because of some financial constraints, I asked him if his vehicle will be able to fly like an aeroplane. He laughed and told me he would work on it.  He is in auto-mechanics, and I think that has exposed him to a lot of things, and that has helped him to get things done better. He needs the right publicity; he needs financial support; and he needs people to keep encouraging him to get out of his shell.”

The entrepreneur director for the school, Folarin Sunkanmi also told THISDAY “that’s what the Nigerian system needs – to get some of these young, talented guys out and encourage them. They are the people that will take the country to stardom if recognised and encouraged. The Ghanaian government exported their youths when the country was in trouble; and that was what led us to see the shoe-menders, the tailors, and all types of vocational workers. All these people came here, got some money, and went back to their country to develop.”

However, he maintained that “LASVEB – the board that supervises technical education in Lagos State, is trying. People like this are detected, encouraged and motivated.”
However, despite the apparent dearth of infrastructures in technical institutions across the country, negatively affecting the prospects of students like Enos, the Lagos State Government has continued to show initiative in fostering technical expertise. Recently, it announced the provision of loans for technical colleges’ graduates who indicate interest in starting up their own businesses. The loans would be interest-free and beneficiaries would not provide any collateral. The financial facility will be processed through the Lagos State Micro Finance Institution (LASMI), and the forms will be made available for the students at their various institutions to enable them apply.

The Deputy Governor of the state, Adejoke Orelope-Adefulire has said the loans were geared towards encouraging the students to embrace entrepreneurial activities and develop the right attitude to entrepreneurship and self-employment. “We have chosen to champion vocational and technical education as it focuses specifically on providing job-related skills for students, while also preparing them to be better positioned to develop new enterprises.

“We have not departed from the position that technical and vocational education presents a complementary approach to general education. Our students are given the right opportunity to explore and identify potential career goals and are provided with the resources needed to achieve goals through technical partnership with industry stakeholders,” she said.

The government has also been involved in public-private partnership in making grants available for technical education in the country. According to the Lagos Eko project website: “The partnership grants for technical education are intended to improve the quality of teaching, research and skills development at the five technical colleges and make them more relevant to the demands of employment and entrepreneurship. The main thrust of these collaborations is to key into the Lagos state’s vision of human capital development particularly targeting areas such as infrastructural development, transportation, housing, and independent power projects.

“The Lagos Eko Project is collaborating with international organisations to develop a center of excellence in each of the five colleges and develop skills that are relevant to today’s market. One of such collaborations is with Samsung which has led to the development of Samsung Engineering Academy, the first in West Africa. The objective of the collaboration is to develop a world class Academy with the sole aim of producing two thousand (2,000) certified electronics technicians over a period of five (5) years in Lagos state.

“The project has also entered into partnership with Festo, a renowned German engineering company in industrial automation technology and mechatronics. The choice of mechatronics is strategic as it presents excellent job opportunities for technical college students especially in areas such as oil and gas, petrochemicals, food and beverages, cement industries, nanotechnology, computer and communications etc.”

However, despite these encouraging developments, it appears that the development of technical education, especially in areas of human capital development, is still struggling. One of the teachers at Government technical College,Ikotun, Ogundipe Shina, lamented the fact that there are no first-rate infrastructures available, and the unwillingness of government and corporate bodies to invest in minds like Enos because they feel what he has done is not a new thing. “They are going to say this is just a moving car, there is nothing new about it; people in Japan are already using remote control and thinking about how to build fuel-less cars. But those who are using the remote started from somewhere. So, we need to think very well about our decisions. I believe the government is not trying at all in that regard. For example, he can make this car bigger by adding more power to the batteries he is using, but that will cost more money. I think he should be encouraged and motivated to keep doing what he is doing,” he said.

The Chairman of the Senate committee on Education, Uche Chujwumerije has noted that the “state of technical/technological education in Nigeria does not compare favourably with those of most African countries. Increasingly, Nigerian Construction Industry imports plumbers, tilers, electricians, etc from Ghana and neighbouring countries because they consider the quality of their skills higher and their professional discipline stronger than that of their Nigerian counterparts.”

He also observed that due to the lack of attention given to technical education, “Nigeria has little or no skilled middle-level manpower to drive economic development. Level of manufacture is so low that Nigeria’s is an import-driven economy. After fifty years of independent existence, Nigeria still imports virtually everything from toothpicks to environmental waste bins. Mass unemployment expands by day because the manpower is not skilled for salaried or self-employment.”

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