The Federal Government has announced a comprehensive audit of all skills acquisition centres across Ministries, Departments, and Agencies (MDAs), marking a bold step in President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s Renewed Hope Agenda to tackle youth unemployment and enhance Nigeria’s workforce productivity.
The decision was disclosed during the 6th meeting of the National Council on Skills (NCS), held at the Presidential Villa and chaired by Vice President Kashim Shettima. The audit aims to identify, catalogue, and evaluate all existing skills centres nationwide to ensure they meet occupational standards and address labour market demands.
Vice President Shettima reaffirmed the administration’s commitment to equipping Nigerian youth with practical, job-ready skills, noting, “We have to make this country work. We need to fill in the skills gap.” The initiative also reflects the administration’s broader drive to harmonise technical and vocational training infrastructure under a coordinated national framework.
As part of the strategy, the government will undertake on-site verification of each centre’s capacity, eliminate redundancy among training programmes, and ensure synergy across agencies. The data collected will help create a centralised national skills infrastructure database that aligns with Nigeria’s economic and human capital goals.
Additionally, the Minister of Housing and Urban Development, Architect Ahmed Musa Dangiwa, presented the National Artisan Skills Acquisition Programme (NASAP), targeting the training and certification of 10,000 artisans annually. NASAP focuses on key construction trades and aims to integrate these skilled workers into a digital marketplace, thereby formalising the largely informal artisan sector.
These coordinated efforts underscore President Tinubu’s belief that a skilled, certified, and digitally integrated workforce is vital for sustainable development, inclusive growth, and national competitiveness.
This audit and NASAP together are poised to reposition Nigeria’s vocational training ecosystem, aligning it with 21st-century realities while empowering a new generation of workers to contribute meaningfully to national development.
