No fewer than 20 indigenous students of Ibeju-Lekki Local Government are to be offered scholarships to acquire technical skills in plumbing, pipeline fittings, industrial electrical installation and others, at the Lagos State Cooperative College Technical (LASCOCO) Skill-up Acquisition Centre.
This was made known by the Executive Chairman of Ibeju-Lekki Local Government, Sesan Olowa during his working visit to the Lagos State Cooperative College to assess the college training facilities on the Technical Skill-up Acquisition Vocational training programme.
Honourable Olowa, who was impressed with the quality of academic training programmes offered by the College, especially in the area of Cooperative and Microfinance studies as demonstrated by the graduands of earlier sponsored students by the Local Government, expressed his confidence in the deliverable of the technical Skill-up programme that is coming with City and Guilds Certification on completion.
According to him, the programme is an initiative the local government intends to explore in helping to train the young ones to fit for all-purpose employment opportunities, especially in the Lekki Free Trade Zone with over 60 companies of local and foreign ownership producing for local and international markets.
He said, “Helping our young ones to get City and Guilds Certificates in various technical fields is commendable. As we know, the world today is a global village. This is another area we feel we can explore and use to help our young ones”.
“The Lekki Free Trade Zone Development Company, Ibeju-Lekki, has well over 60 companies from all over the world, and most are companies manufacturing for the local and export markets. Today, those companies have become a pool of employment and many of our young ones do not have the skills and certificates needed for jobs available. What you are offering us will provide that leverage for us to be able to help those young ones into that market.”
The Chairman, who believed in the viability of the programme, promised to deepen the vocation by establishing a relationship between the Institution and the Lekki Free Trade Zone so that products of the College in this regard become a pool of technically skilled workers supplied to the zone.
“We would also like to deepen the relationship by establishing a relationship between the College and Lekki Free Trade Zone so that as you are producing, they can be taken from you, and they become takers from the school. The relationship will also be taken further to other major players in the Lekki corridor so that you become a supplier of talent skills to various companies in that zone”, he stated.
The scholarship programme, Hon. Olowa disclosed, was in conjunction with the Ade Otukomaya Foundation under the local government’s educational empowerment scheme.
Earlier in his welcome address, the Provost of the College, Mr. Akorede Ojomu, commended the Ibeju-Lekki Local Government helmsman, Hon. Olowa’s commitment and service to his community, especially in youth empowerment and development, describing it as an unparallel and wished him more success in this regard.
Briefing the gathering further, Ojomu said that the College decided to take up the vocational technical training of manpower skills to address the shortage of standard-raised technicians.
Many of these set of workers, according to him, are needed in the small and medium-scale enterprises and other industrial sectors of the state’s economy, especially in the Lekki Free Trade Zone corridor, to debunk the notion of sending people to acquire such skills from neighbouring countries due to insufficient standardized technicians in the country and to forestall importation of same from abroad by these foreign manufacturing companies.
He added that the vocation would create more opportunities not only for Ibeju Lekki youths but also for the whole of Lagos State.
