Abia embarks on institutional reforms to drive state industries

Governor Okezie Ikpeazu of Abia State said reforms in the state universities and technical colleges would be directed at encouraging growth of ‘industrial clusters’ currently being established in the state to drive entrepreneurship education for skills development.

The governor during a courtesy visit to the National Universities Commission (NUC) on Thursday said industrial clusters initiative was to be driven by ‘Education for Employment strategy,’ which he said was a strategy that would forge strong alliance between industries and universities in the state.

He said: “We would start by strengthening the faculties of engineering that we have. We have already conceptualised industrial clusters that would focus on all the issues that we are going to deal with by ensuring a systematic weaving of industries and the universities for entrepreneurship knowledge.

“The foundation of our visit is to encourage grow those who are technically minded into middle-level cadre manpower that could mainstream the mechanisation of processes of production in Abia State, with respect to garments, shoes, and the likes.

“The reforms we are embarking on are holistic, starting from primary, secondary and tertiary education. We must be able to get the foundation well in our primary education, to be able to get the best from our youths.”

“Abia is the SME capital of Nigeria, and we must be able to take advantage of that. There is no doubt that we are good with what we do with our hands, welding, shoes, bags, clothes, so we want to see if we could leverage on that to drive our economy and create more wealth for our people.”

He explained further that “by doing so, we provide the critical manpower that would drive these initiatives. What we want to do is that at the point of exit in our secondary schools, we have people that have the capacity of entrepreneurship.”

Responding, Julius Okojie, executive secretary, NUC, said the governor had started off on a good note by starting reforms from institutions of learning, which is key in human development.

“The child must be supported to grow from the family, while the government provides the enabling environment for learning to occur. 75 percent of the learning happens at the family level, but the government must provide the basic needed support,” he said.