FSTC Plans Skills Acquisition for Students

Federal Science and Technical College, Yaba, is planning to introduce short courses on skills acquisition for ex-students and other interested persons, the Principal, Dr Ogochukwu Ufoegbune has said

Ufoegbune who disclosed this recently, during the college’s 10th annual speech and prize- giving ceremony/valedictory service, in Lagos, said the short courses to be introduced will be designed to last for three to six months.

She said that the need to produce young people who are well equipped with modern skills that will meet the 21st century need informed the initiative.

According to her, “We all know that technology is the way to go. Today’s economy world wide is technology driven and therefore, we cannot afford to be left behind as a country. So for us in this college, part of the mandate is to train and graduate students who are well trained and capable of establishing the skills they have acquired.

“It is expected that our technical students on graduation must acquire all the skills they are supposed to acquire to become self employed and if possible, employers of labour. That is why we are actually planning to take it further by introducing short skills acquisition courses where even our past students, students from other schools as well as those who have gone beyond secondary schools, can come in here for a period of three to six months and acquire skills that will enable them set up small scale businesses that will not require so much money to set up.”

She however called on federal government to further intensify efforts in upgrading the various workshops in the college, adding that most of the equipment were non- functional and obsolete.

The principal said the college is expecting government’s intervention in the area of equipment to enhance teaching and learning objectives.

“We are expecting more intervention from government in this regard. It has actually started, but we are expecting that they will do more, so that the workshop will meet up with 21st century needs. Our staff strength, though not adequate especially in the technical aspect, needs to be improved upon. We indeed need more technical teachers.

“The Federal Ministry of Education has also started to address this too by sending about 25 teachers recently to the school. It is however an on-going exercise because recently, the ministry recruited about 800 teachers that were spread across the 104 Unity colleges in the country.”