The Senate Committee on industry has commended the Director General of the Industrial Training Fund, Sir, Joe Ari, and the management of the Fund, for the, while urging other empowerment agencies to emulate the Director of the ITF for the unprecedented achievement as the ITF clocks 50 years.

The Senate Committee Chairman on Industry, Senator Tokunbo Abiru, made the commendations in a chat with newsmen on Monday at an interactive session with representatives of agencies under its committee.

Earlier, in the week the Director General, Sir Ari at the Annual Industrial training Fund merit award ceremony held at the multi- purpose complex Gymnasium ITF Headquarters reeled out the achievements and the programmes of the ITF in the year under review and its plans to implement other skills intervention programmes across the 36 States and the FCT in 2022.

Sir Ari, disclosed that as mark of commitment to ensuring that more Nigerians acquire Skills “We have commenced the processes for the implementation of other skills intervention programs in 2022 “

While unveiling the program for the year 2022, Sir Ari, said that “The programs en -marked for implementations are passion 2 profession programme ( P2PP), Construction Skill Empowerment Program, ( CONSEP) , Women Skills Empowerment Programme ( WOSEP) , National Industrial Skills Empowerment Program ( NISEP), Industrial Skills Development Programme ( NISEDP), Agri- Prenureship Skills Empowerment programme ( AGSEP), Special Skills Development Programme ( SSDP), ITF- NECA TSDP and skills Training and empowerment programme for the physically challenged ( STEPP-C)”

Apart from the NISDP that will be implemented in all the state of the federation, including FCT , the rest of the Skills according to the ITF boss, will be shared amongst the states base on the likelihood of the participants to eke out sustainable livelihood , because of the need of the state for such peculiar skills.

While commending the staff and management of ITF for their supports, Sir, Ari said that the “The ITF merit award provide us with the platform to present our score cards, recognize and celebrate staff and other stakeholders, whose individual and collective contributions were invaluable to the achievement of our corporate targets in the preceding year “



Continued, he said that “The year 2021 which was declared as the year of ‘Skills Escalation for Prosperity’ was at once quite challenging and as well very fulfilling year for us as an organization . It was challenging because it tasked our resilience and innate creativity, Nigeria like the rest of the world, was made worse by a myriad of the social economic problems that manifested in the form of unrelenting criminality across the nation, the soaring cost of living, rampant kidnapping and separatists’ agitations among others. As an institution that is reliant on a thriving economy and endless mobility 2021 was therefore an extremely a tough year on many levels”



“Our decision to declare this year, 2021 as year of Skills Escalation for Prosperity” was informed by the urgent need for us as leading human capacity institution in Nigeria to step up our Skills acquisition efforts so that many Nigerians as possible are equip with requisite skills to assist individuals and corporate organizations to overcome the effect of the numerous opportunities that opened to us as a result of the policies of the Federal Government”

Interestingly, despite the challenges alluded to earlier by the Director General, the agency implemented the following skill interventions , namely, the National Industrial Skills Development programme( NISDP) , Women Skills Empowerment Programme( WOSEP), Agri- Prenuership Skills Empowerment Programme( AGSEP), Federal Government Skills Empowerment programme( FEGOSEP) , Special Skills Intervention programme( SSIP), Modular Skills Development Project ( MSDP).

“ Together, the programme trained over 16000 Nigerians that were empowered with startup packs for them to start up their own” Ari stated.

Sir, Ari, noted that “Similarly, the five ITF skills training Centres spread across the federation trained a total of 3,397 Nigerians in various trades and Crafts”

A breakdown of the figures shows that the Industrial Skills Training Centre ( ISTC) Ikeja, trained 436 Nigerians, Model Skills Training Centre( MSTC), Abuja763, Industrial Skills Training Centre( ISTC), Kano 294, and Centre for Excellent( CFE) Buruku, 1550.



Dr. Ari, said that “ One of the core functions of the Fund is the capacity building for employers of labour for them to be productive and contribute mean fully to the growth and development of the private and public sectors of Nigeria economy”

In this regard to assist employers of labour to recover from the disruptive of the CODVID- 19 pandemic, in the year under review, the fund implemented Three Hundred and Twelve employees (312 ) employees scheduled training programmes, for Three Thousand , Two Hundred and Twelve employees ( 3, 212) and another Eight Hundred and Twenty Eight ( 828) organisations.

It has also trained a total of Seven Thousand Seven Hundred and Seven ( 7,707) Employees from Four Hundred and Sixty ( 460) under its unscheduled training programme.

In addition the agency carried out performance and productivity improvement surveys for 25 Companies and implemented 20 training programme for Five Hundred and Forty One ( 541) employers from the Companies surveyed.