Abia Moves to Revive Technical Colleges, Trains 100,000 Youths

Abia State Government has taken steps to revive its technical colleges to serve as breeding ground for 100,000 youths expected to be trained in technical skills over a four year period.

To prepare the ground for the formal launch of the programme tagged ‘Education for Empowerment’ (E4E) scheduled for next month, a stakeholders’ engagement meeting recently held in Umuahia to brainstorm on the new programme initiated by Governor Okezie Ikpeazu.

The Proprietor of Kiara College in United Kingdom, Mr. Endi Ezengwa, has been engaged by the state government to revive technical and vocational education in the state.

Already, three technical colleges, Boys Technical College, Aba; Government Technical College, Ohafia; and Afara Technical College, Umuahia have been selected to serve as pilot schools for the programme.

Ezengwa, who had run a programme on ‘Bridging the Gap between Educational Institutions and Industries in Africa’, told journalists that equipping Abia youths with technical skills would be a more valuable and sustainable form of empowerment unlike what happened in the past.

“The concept of education for employment is geared towards ensuring that education in Abia State leads to employment by imbuing our youths with technical skills that enable them become publicly employed, privately employed or self-employed.”

According to him, the skills imparted in the youths would be tailored to the manpower needs of the local industries as the industrialists would be engaged to make known their specific manpower needs.

He said the ultimate goal of E4E is to make life better for the people of Abia, as it is expected that the technical skills would rub off on the small scale industries in Aba to improve the standard of goods they produce.

Ezengwa said psychometric tests would be carried out on the youths to determine their educational and entrepreneurial aptitudes so that they could be guided to study vocational courses that match their abilities and interests.

“We want to capture all of them,” he said, adding that E4E centres would be established in the 17 local government areas of Abia State where youth development officers would have them registered and guided on choice of vocational courses prior to the training.

To produce the manpower needed for the technical training programme, the coordinator said the technical components of education at Abia State Polytechnic, Aba and College of Education, Arochukwu would be enhanced.

“We may not have all the answers but we have a direction,” he said, adding that education should be tailored in such a way that it would make one to develop a skill and become an expert in a particular field.