Some industry chieftains have called on multinationals and large corporate organisations to come together to help fund Nigerian state owned tertiary institutions in order to produce better quality graduates for the work force of the future.
The call was made yesterday at a General Electric (GE) Nigeria event, titled ‘The future of work in Nigeria and the launch of skills white paper’, where the industry chieftains stressed that credibility of tertiary institutions was essential for funding.
A study commissioned by General Electric (GE) on the skills gap in Africa has recommended a three-pronged solution that will ultimately bridge the deficit between the skills set needed in the modern day work place and the skills available today in the labour market.
The resultant white paper from the study authored by GE’s Chief Economist, Marco Anunziata, recommended that African countries should improve education and skill-building, with more emphasis on science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) courses, if the continent must grow.
It also called on multinational companies to help in building Africa’s human capital through deeper engagements in localisation strategies which focus on capacity building.
Speaking at the interactive session to mark the launch of the Skills White Paper, Enase Okonedo, the Dean of Lagos Business School (LBS), said that the funding model for LBS is different from that of other government universities in the country, in that the institution has no incentive to share profit to different shareholders, as all the surplus goes back into the development and improvement of the school.
“Corporations such as GE, have come on board to help with funding because of the school’s credibility and accountability. The relationship we have with the industry has helped to make our charges constant and even lesser than it should be, even though we are regarded as quite pricey. It will be difficult to replicate these standards throughout the nation,” she said.
Agreeing with the issue of credibility as an essential characteristic to get funding, Lazarus Angbazo, Chief Executive Officer, GE Nigeria, said “the way to get funding from big companies like GE or Coca-Cola is by credibility and accountability.”
Angbazo maintained that Nigeria has a chance to extend its recent economic success much further, by leveraging its impressive demographic dividend.
When asked by Frank Aigbogun, publisher of BusinessDay Newspaper, why government owned instituitions did not get as much funding from multinationals as the privately owned tertiary institutions, Laoye Jaiyeola, CEO, Nigerian Economic Summit Group (NESG) said that it did not matter whether the funding was going to private or public institutions.
“I don’t believe that funding is the primary problem for state owned institutions. What needs to be funded is the output. When there is transparency and good governance, funding will follow. I have never seen any Nigerian university publish its account,” he said.
Also speaking about the quality of Nigerian graduates churned out into the workforce in recent times, Adeola Adetunji, Managing Director, Coca-Cola Nigeria, said that there seems to be an issue with the Nigerian tertiary institution curriculum, as there is very little room left for innovation, telling from the quality of graduates being produced recently.
Adetunji added that multinationals cannot help all alone. There needs to be some sort of engagement with the government to ensure that there are policies that help facilitate the process, he said.
According to him, “human capital is more important than the oil sector and in developing the right skills for the work place, vocational training is also very important.”
He expressed the view that a coalition of manufacturing multinational companies is what is needed to partner with the public sector in order to scale up their respective skill building engagements.
Frank Aigbogun ended the discussion by stating that it is high time for more companies and multinationals to all come together to make a change in the future of Nigeria’s work force.
“CEO’s need to stop working behind the scenes and come out to start making things happen, by working together.”
Jumoke Akiyode
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