Opinion
Rewriting Nigeria’s Future Through Skills, Opportunity
Nigeria’s economic future may depend less on the jobs it creates than on the skills it can build. Across trades and industries, a new push is turning informal expertise into certified, productive and globally competitive talent, LOIS SAMBO writes.
For Nigeria, the challenge is no longer simply creating jobs. It is creating people with the practical skills to fill existing jobs, build businesses and compete in an increasingly global labour market. Against that backdrop, the recent direction of the Industrial Training Fund, ITF, offers an instructive case study in how skills development can become an instrument of economic transformation.
Since Dr Afiz Oluwatoyin Ogun assumed office as Director-General and Chief Executive, the Fund has increasingly placed employability, certification, productivity and the formalisation of artisan skills at the centre of its interventions. The approach is significant because the ITF’s statutory mandate goes beyond training: it is also required to promote skills acquisition, set training standards, and evaluate and certify vocational competencies.
The scale is considerable. Ogun has said the Fund has trained and empowered more than 25 million Nigerians in various skills over its years of operation, helping beneficiaries acquire marketable competencies and greater capacity for self-reliance. But perhaps the clearest expression of the current emphasis is the Skill-Up Artisans, SUPA, Programme.
Nigeria has millions of artisans whose abilities are often acquired through apprenticeship rather than formal institutions. The problem is that competence without recognised certification can limit access to major contracts, formal employment and opportunities outside the country.
SUPA attempts to address that gap by identifying practising artisans, assessing their existing abilities, upgrading their skills and connecting competence with recognised certification. The programme is structured around foundation training, soft skills and subsequent technical and entrepreneurial development. Its soft-skills component includes project management, occupational health and safety, ethics and patriotism.
The results are already measurable. The Foundation phase graduated 29,000 artisans in 2024, while the next phase was designed to accommodate another 100,000 trainees. Screening for the programme was conducted across the country’s 90 senatorial districts, with ITF also assessing and accrediting training centres.
The bigger question, however, is what happens after training. This is where the programme’s international certification component becomes important.
Just last month, more than 7,000 Nigerian artisans were undergoing international certification examinations across 27 states and 28 centres, with the ITF reporting an investment of more than ₦700 million in the exercise. An earlier pilot in Abuja involved more than 200 artisans.
The significance extends beyond certificates. Proper assessment can help distinguish demonstrable competence from mere claims of expertise, while internationally recognised qualifications can improve artisans’ prospects for contracts and employment in Nigeria and abroad.
Building the trainers who build others
Another important development is the decision to invest in the people responsible for multiplying technical competence. Also in August, ITF commenced an eight-week programme for 100 artisans and trainers, involving trainers from the United Kingdom. Participants are being prepared not only in their trades but also in teaching, training and assessment. Those completing the programme are expected to acquire Trade Level 3, teaching and training, and assessor qualifications.
That model addresses a fundamental weakness in skills development: training more people is not enough if there are insufficient qualified instructors and assessors to maintain standards. It also creates a multiplier effect. A properly trained artisan can serve customers; a properly trained artisan who can teach and assess others can help expand the country’s pool of competent workers.
Linking training to the real economy
The ITF’s collaboration with the Nigeria Employers’ Consultative Association, NECA, provides another important dimension. The long-running Technical Skills Development Project combines classroom instruction, practical training, industrial attachment and entrepreneurship development. NECA reports that the programme has empowered more than 8,000 young people annually across more than 30 trade areas, with about 80 per cent of graduates securing employment or moving into entrepreneurship.
This is the critical distinction between training as an activity and training as an economic intervention. A successful skills programme should ultimately answer three questions: What can the trainee do? Who will employ the trainee? And can the trainee create sustainable work independently? Recent ITF initiatives increasingly attempt to answer all three.
For the 2026 SUPA cycle, the Federal Government approved ₦3.6 billion for a business-incubation component aimed at supporting about 200,000 artisans. Rather than relying exclusively on the traditional distribution of starter packs, the model is designed to provide structured business support and equipment to qualifying beneficiaries.
This reflects an important lesson from previous empowerment schemes: giving someone equipment does not automatically create a viable enterprise. Skills, equipment, market access, mentorship and professional standards must work together.
The wider challenge
There remains a much larger task ahead. Nigeria’s youthful population, unemployment pressures, industrial skills shortages and dependence on imported technical expertise mean that vocational education cannot remain a secondary option.
The ITF-NECA experience demonstrates both the potential and the scale of the challenge. Its programmes now cover 35 trade areas, from electrical and electronic maintenance, welding and fabrication to ICT, mechatronics, plumbing, construction, solar installation and refrigeration.
The emerging direction under Ogun is therefore less about celebrating one administrator and more about testing an idea: whether Nigeria can convert its vast reservoir of informal talent into a certified, productive and globally competitive workforce.
If sustained, properly funded and transparently implemented, that shift could have consequences far beyond individual beneficiaries. It could strengthen small businesses, supply industries with competent workers, reduce dependence on imported skills and give millions of Nigerians a more practical route from unemployment to productivity.
For the ITF, the real measure of success will ultimately not be the number of people trained or certificates issued. It will be whether those skills translate into better work, stronger enterprises, higher productivity and sustainable livelihoods.
That is where Nigeria’s skills revolution will either succeed—or fall short.