Olufemi Adediran 
The Federal Government, through the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), has trained 40 artisans in Ogun State on digital and ICT skills.
The five-day training programme tagged, “Digital skills for artisans” was done in conjunction with the Federal Ministry of Communications, Innovation and Digital Economy.
The participants, comprising technological artisans were drawn from the six local government areas of Ogun Central Senatorial District.
They were also equipped with the necessary ICT gadgets, including laptops to improve their trade.
Declaring the programme opened on Monday, the Director General and Chief Executive Officer of NITDA, Kashifu Inuwa Abdullahi said, the purpose of the programme is to equip and empower young artisans with the necessary digital skills and ICT tools in order to be competitive in the 21st-century digital economy.
According to him, the training was aimed at addressing the mirage of problems confronting the nation, especially the shortage of skills among unemployed and underemployed youths.
Abdullahi said, NITDA through nationwide training of local artisans in the various sectors of the economy was committed to ending the incursion of foreign artisans in the Nigerian labour market.
Abdullahi who spoke through the Project Supervisor, Muhammed Abduuraheem said, the training was designed to build the capacity of Nigerian youths who are entrepreneurs and require digital skills to improve their businesses and generate higher revenue thereby increasing the nation’s GDP as well as reducing unemployment.
Abdullahi said, “Digital literacy skills and IT tools are inadequate among youths and under-employed in Nigeria. In order to address such, there is a need to equip the youths with the right IT skills and tools so as to create more digital awareness and jobs which will in turn improve the digital economy in line with the agency’s mandate.
“The objective of the training is to equip our youths with digital and IT skills which is in line with international standard.
“The purpose of this training is for the participants to be able to use the basic tools of IT. They are also going to be equipped with gadgets that they are going to be using constantly to learn more.
“This training is more practical, hands-on. We have IT tools, such as laptops which they are going to start making use of.”
“Equipping our youths apart from this programme, we have other programmes online certification which can provide jobs for youths.”
