The Federal Government, yesterday, in Abuja said no fewer that 50,000 of the nation�s engineers were either unemployable or needed additional training to make themselves relevant in today�s emerging technologies.
Speaking at the opening of the multi-million dollar Technical Assistance Centre (TAC) and the expanded training center of a local telecoms industry, Huawei Technologies Nigeria Limited, President Olusegun Obasanjo, blamed the situation on the collapse of the nation�s tertiary institutions. Huawei Technologies Nigeria Limited is a foreign direct investment of the Chinese in Nigeria.
Represented by the Minister of Science and Technology, Professor Turner Isoun, said: �There were as many as 50,000 graduate engineers in the country today. But I regret to say that some of them, maybe most of them are unemployable and cannot be employed unless through re-training and transfer of technology.�
He, therefore, renewed his appeal to the People�s Republic of China to bridge the technological gap between both countries through the participation of more Chinese firms in the Nigerian economy and the training of Nigerian engineers on Chinese technologies in order to domesticate such technologies.
She identified information technology, telecommunication, space and satellite programmes as key areas where both countries needed to collaborate for mutual benefits.
The ceremony attracted dignitaries including the Chinese envoy in Nigeria, Ambassador Wang Yong Qiu; Minister of Communications, Chief Cornelius Adebayo; Huwawei�s President for Sub-Saharan Africa, Mr. Tao Jingwen; Managing Director of Nigeria Telecommuni-cations Limited, Mr Albert Mashi; his counterpart in the M-Tel, Mr. Edwin Momife amongst others.
The president�s representative, further underlined the essence of human capacity development in the quest for technology transfer, stressing that part of the reasons why Nigeria was yet to catch up with countries like China was the low quality of engineering graduates produced by Nigerian universities, a situation he linked with the use of outdated academic curricular following the collapse of the universities in the last fifteen years of military rule.
He urged foreign investors in Nigeria to emulate China and take a queue from what Huwawei had done in terms of investment and domestication of technologies, adding that the practice in the past where Nigeria hired expatriates to build its infrastructures and retained the services of foreign firms to maintain the facilities for years on end was not good enough.
�The reforms in the telecom sector are no doubt yielding results as typified by the GSM revolution. Clearly this has exposed the skill s shortage in the sector. It therefore gives me pleasure to be here today to witness the formal commissioning of Huwawei�s Training Centre set up to address human capacity building in telecom. This feat of excellence that has generally become synonymous with Huwawei and Chinese community in Nigeria at large, presents new opportunities in the Nigerian communications market. Your investment expresses your confidence in the Federal Government reform agenda which encourages liberalisation, market driven economy and direct foreign investment,� Obasanjo said.
The Training Centre, located in the highbrow Maitama District of the Federal Capital Territory is furnished with state of the art telecom equipment and products designed to support all types of computer-based training, operations and equipment maintenance. It offers human capacity building services on the most modern technologies relevant to the
growing telecommunications industry in Nigeria. While the TAC will be particularly useful to the numerous mobile network operators in the country, the expanded training centre will train 2000 telecom engineers per annum and would draw clientele from Nigeria and across other countries in West Africa.