Vice President Kashim Shettima has commended Kaduna State Governor Uba Sani for setting up and chairing the first Kaduna State Council on Skills, describing it as exemplary. The Vice President urged other state governments to follow suit as he declared that the era of working in isolation is over.
Shettima was speaking on Tuesday during the 7th meeting of the National Council on Skills (NCS), which was held at the Presidential Villa in Abuja. He called for collective action to actualise the administration’s skills acquisition drive, stating that the skills revolution is one of the covenants the Tinubu administration has entered into with the Nigerian people.
“The era of operating in silos is over,” the Vice President told the council. “We must move towards a new streamlined workflow that embeds collaboration directly into the process of curriculum development and funding.”
He explained that this new collaborative process is essential not for bureaucratic convenience, but for the benefit of citizens across the nation. “This new process isn’t just for our own convenience; it is for the ambitious artisan in Kaura Namoda seeking certification; for the mid-career worker in Ebute-Metta; and for the technical colleges across the nation that need funding to become true centres of excellence,” VP Shettima emphasised.
The Vice President charged all relevant stakeholders to unite to ensure every Nigerian can acquire the skills needed to thrive, a goal central to the government’s Renewed Hope Agenda. He thanked members of the council for their robust engagement and acknowledged their understanding that institutional friction must be addressed.
“And fulfilling such a promise is not contingent on inter-agency harmony; it demands it. We have to unite. We simply cannot build a future-ready workforce on a foundation of division,” he added.
On the federal government’s skills revolution drive, Shettima was firm, stating that “no door to funding can be unlocked without collaboration among relevant agencies and ministries.” He urged the council to continue striving to develop and enforce a unified structure for Nigeria’s skills revolution.
“We must replace fragmentation with a framework for partnership. We must replace indecision with a clear and resolute path forward. Let’s move from this room to the work of implementation with a single mind and a shared purpose,” he said.
Earlier, Governor Uba Sani had highlighted his state’s progress, recalling that the Kaduna Vocational and Skills Development Institute recently admitted over 30,000 students. He thanked the Vice President for his strong commitment to ensuring the council achieves its goals, particularly in job creation.
The Minister of Education, Dr. Olatunji Alausa, also commended the Kaduna State Governor for his significant role in facilitating President Tinubu’s commissioning of the Institute of Vocational Training and Skills Development. He added that, in line with the government’s skills acquisition drive, the ministry has directed technical colleges to focus exclusively on relevant courses for the new academic year.
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