By Anthony Otaru, Abuja
The Industrial Training Fund (ITF) is abolishing the practice of handing out starter packs to graduands of its skills training programs to expose them to certification in both local and international markets.
ITF Director-General Dr Afiz Oluwatoyin Ogun made this known to journalists in Abuja over the weekend following the Fund’s completion of its latest round of assessment of privately owned training centre collaborators for the delivery of the SUPA program across Nigeria.
“As ITF commences SUPA Phase II deployment and training process, it seeks to increase the number of privately owned training centres from 880 to 1500.
The ITF boss stressed that the latest development enables it to achieve the target of graduating 100,000.
He said, “This figure of 100,000 artisans will be drawn from the 29,000 that graduated from the SUPA Foundation programme (Phase I) last year and from the pool of over 700,000 registered artisans on its SUPA platform.
“Although this population is scattered across every local government area in Nigeria, it is necessary to have at least two training centres per local government to guarantee ease of access by artisans.
“The training centre accreditation process is a comprehensive process that involves the examination of the corporate structure of Training Centers, evaluation of their physical infrastructure and set-up, appraisal of their training equipment and assessment of competence/qualifications of their instructors. Each Training Centre must first register on the SUPA platform of the ITF.”
He explained that upon completing this accreditation process, the Fund would publish the list of successful training centres based on their categorisations in categories A, B, and C.
Thereafter, the Fund will begin notifying artisans of their deployment to the various accredited training centres based on their proximity to their disclosed residential address.
He noted that the exercise will commence and end before April 30, 2025.
The statement further disclosed that the Fund would encourage significant investments by improving the capacities of accredited training centres to meet SUPA’s target of international certification.
“Over 3000 instructors from the 880 accredited training centres have undergone train-the-trainer courses. The Fund is developing a wide range system for equipment support for training centres and seeking ways to ease access to finance.”
