Kano State Governor, Dr. Abdullahi Umar Ganduje has said his administration is determined to turn Kano into China of Nigeria through its policy of training youths in specialised skills.
This was as he said that, his government was reviewing the current Nigerian education curriculum with a view to adjusting it to cater for specific areas of manpower needs in the country.
Ganduje who stated these on Tuesday at the graduation of 150 trainees from Kano State at the Peugeot Automobile Nigeria (PAN) Learning Center in Kaduna, said the high unemployment rate in the country was because youths were not made to acquire the required skills needed.
Speaking to the trainees who acquired special training in different aspects of Automotive Engineering, the Governor told them that, the aim of their training was not only to get them employed but, turn Kano to China of Nigeria through their productivity.
According to him, “we are training you, not only for you to become self-employed and employers of labour. We are training you not to remain in Kano alone. We want to be like China is to the world that is what we want Kano to be to Nigeria. Chinese are all over the world, we want Kano to be all over Nigeria.
“This is can only be possible if you have some vital skills, skills that are not common, unless you have something to sell, something to offer, irrespective of your location. Wherever you go, your skill is something you can offer to the people.
“We want to remove ourselves from tribalism and useless sentiment. We want to build our economy, we want to build manpower. Because there are countries that don’t have a single drop of oil and yet they are one of the biggest economies in the world. How did they achieve that? It is their brain and skills.” He said.
Ganduje said his administration is identifying the needed skills so that youths can be trained for sustainable employment and it is building a N5 billion skills acquisition center in Kano to train the youths.
He said Kano as the most populous state in Nigeria must tap its vast human potential otherwise the human asset would become a liability. He said the current training in various forms of automobile engineering the youths from Kano are undergoing is one the ways the government is tackling the issue of unemployment in the state.
Earlier, the Managing Director of PAN, Alhaji Ibrahim Boyi said the youth empowerment initiative of the company is an extension of what the Kano state government is doing for youths as it is providing a platform for them to be productive.
He said it is the hope of the center that in five years from now, it would be offering degree program in auto engineering.
President of the trainees, Mohammed Saleh, who spoke at the occasion, thanked the governor for the opportunity given him and his mates to acquire skills saying they would put them to good use to develop the state and help their people.
He called on the governor to build a similar facility in Kano for the training of the youths so that the teeming number of youths in the state can equally benefit. - The Nation
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