Minister canvasses one year re-schooling for Nigerian fresh graduates

- Tens of thousands of Nigerian students may spend extra year in specialised institutions after graduation

- The move is in order to make them employable after school

- The re-schooling would serve as a training ground for graduates to be well equipped on the rudiments of the course studied

The minister of state for education, Professor Anthony Anwukah, has put forward a proposal for Nigerian students to spend an extra year in specialised institutions after graduation.

Professor Anwukah's proposal was tabled at the ongoing retreat for Governing Councils of Nigerian Federal Universities, organised by the National Universities Commission (NUC) with the theme, “Elements of Statutory Governance, Procurement and Financial Accounting in Nigerian Universities.”

He said the suggestion was being made because many university graduates were not good enough to be employed by industries.

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“Law students attend law school for one year before going for NYSC and medical students go for one year Housemanship before they are allowed to practice fully, so it will be necessary for other courses to also go through this process.

“The Lagos Business School can also serve as a one year after-school training.

“The universities are producing products that are not matching the needs of the industries. I urged the committee of pro-chancellors and committee of vice-chancellors to end the decline in the standard of education.

“The SIWES projects introduced for a year industrial attachment for students has failed in the universities. It is not doing its role in bridging the gap between the universities and the industries,” Anwukah said.

He said that re-schooling would serve as a training ground for graduates to be well equipped on the rudiments of the course studied.

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Contacted by Daily Trust to throw more light on the proposal, the minister said: “We are trying to sell an idea, the proposal is to get into our university system the re-schooling concept, that is you finish your university degree may be add one more year as a finishing school project, I don’t know how it is going to sell ... but the idea has come as a result of the failure of SIWES system in the universities.

“We try to address the relationship between the universities, the industries and the graduates, how they can fit in and we introduced the SIWES project and it is not working and it is not providing that bridge between the industries because the most industries are unwilling to accept most students on the SIWES programme.

“We want to brainstorm and see whether we can add one additional year so that when a student finishes from the university he can now go out to industries for one year internship for that job. For instance, the law department had one extra year after the law programme they go to law school, doctors go for one additional year.

“Are we going to continue with the SIWESS experiment which is not working or we are going to brace up to introduce an additional year of re-school whereby you spend that one year in any industry. For instance, the Lagos Business School can serve as one year learning experience for students in business, accountancy and others, the NTA school in Jos can handle that of journalists,” he said.

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Meanwhile, Batch B beneficiaries of the N-Power on Friday, April 13, collected their mobile devices at the NUT Pavilion, Teachers House, in Alausa Lagos.

Legit.ng gathered that the beneficiaries were largely 2016 Batch B beneficiaries who had undergone training in the N-Power Teach, N-Power Agro and N-Power Health programmes.

An initiative of the federal government, the N-Power scheme seeks to address the unemployment challenges in the country by recruiting 500,000 volunteers, training and paying them a monthly stipend of N30,000 over a 2-year period.

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Source: Legit.ng