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ITF says Nigerian youths are unemployable

THE Director-General of Industrial Training Fund, Joseph Ari has blamed the rising unemployment rate in Nigeria on the lack of essential skills among the youths.

The DG said, on Thursday, that there were many job vacancies in the country that were waiting for skilled manpower but Nigerian youths do not merit the positions, NAN reported.



He made the claim based on the results of a survey recently conducted by ITF in collaboration with the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO).  “Based on a Skills Gap Assessment survey in the six priority sectors of the Nigeria economy… vacancies exist in all sectors,” said Ari.

ITF boss said from the survey, 925 trades have been difficult and hard to fill in the country’s labour market. He said 19.5 percent vacancies are yet to be filled in the housing sector while the petrochemical sector has more than 13.9 percent vacancies for skilled workers.




     

     

    The auto sector has 11.4 percent, textiles sector has 10.3 vacancies for workers.  Other areas include steel, leather and service have jobs waiting for the right workers as well.

    Due to the lack of requisite skills from unemployed Nigerians, ITF DG said many vacancies are filled by non-Nigerians. “The unfortunate truth is that the vacancies are always filled by non-Nigerians,” he said.

    According to ITF, 15.7 percent of all the hard-to-fill vacancies were due to lack of technical skills, while 11.8 percent were due to lack of basic Industrial Training (IT), skills. Lack of soft skills and advanced industrial training skills deprived many of employment in Nigeria.

    The latest report from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) of the labour force statistics indicates a worsening unemployment rate. The December report shows that the unemployment rate in Nigeria increased to 23.1 percent in the third quarter of 2018. The figure means that 20.9 million Nigerians are jobless or unemployed.

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