24 July 2013, Lagos – The Lagos State Governor, Mr. Babatunde Fashola, has linked the debacle of the country’s entrepreneurs to oil boom, which he said, culminated in the intractable crisis of unemployment and undermined economic growth.
The governor consequently condemned the culture of street trading and hawking prevalent in the state, noting that there should be way to build their technical and vocational skills, which were urgently required in the emerging economy of the state.
Fashola expressed these concerns at the state’s first enterprise day held at NECA House, Alausa, where he urged graduates and students of technical colleges and vocational centres to take up their roles in the task of infrastructure renewal.
The governor, who addressed the forum alongside Special Adviser on Commerce and Industry, Mr. Oluseye Oladejo; Executive Secretary of the state Technical and Vocational Education Board, LASTVEB, Mr. Olawumi Gasper and Commissioner for Education, Mrs. Olayinka Oladunjoye, lamented the job losses to technicians and artisans from neighbouring countries.
But, the governor said the dangerous trend had started changing, due to what he ascribed to the state policy redirection, which placed emphasis on technical and vocational education to develop skills required in a megacity.
He explained that the county was once increasingly losing jobs to technicians and artisans from Ghana, Togo and Benin Republic among others, which according to past reports, had cost the country a whopping sum of N960 billion annually.
“Now that the rhetoric is changing gradually, the challenges now are how to create jobs for the graduates of technical colleges and vocational centres in the state. So, trading in traffic is a skill in a wrong place,” he said.
– Gboyega Akinsanmi, This Day