BENIN CITY- Edo State Governor Mr. Godwin Obaseki said for any nation that seeks to be industrialised and developed such a nation certainly should embrace and take the route of vocational and technical education to achieve the feat.

He disclosed this while receiving donated equipment and tools from Industrial Training Fund (ITF) and Nigeria Employers Consultative Association (NECA) at the premises of Government Science and Technical College (GSTC) in Benin City yesterday.

Obaseki said Nigeria can not be a country that relies on paper certificate alone but also have technical skills to impact to make the needed difference. “We can not be a country that relies on paper certificate alone. The purpose of paper certificate is for you to be employed but of what use to have a certificate when you are not employable and don’t have any skills to impact”.

He said the focus of his administration is to emphasis on basic and technical education to enable all citizens of the state to get qualitative education that will set them for the future.

“In developed countries in the world, the workforce is made up of people who are technically trained but not people who went to Universities. This administration believed in the acquisition of relevant skills because it is the first fundamental steps to job creation and it will help reduced the huge deficit in the area of manpower”.

Governor Obaseki said his administration has commenced the rehabilitation projects in GSTC with the construction of four new blocks of classrooms, the designing of a light industrial park to produce between three to five mega watts of electricity to the location. “By the time we finish with this College, we will have an Institution that will produce between two to five thousand well trained technical graduates every year”.

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Earlier, the Director General of NECA Mr. Olusegun Oshinowo in his speech appreciated the Godwin Obaseki led administration for the steps taken to revamp vocational and technical education in the state.

He said the biggest problem facing the Country today is that of unemployment, stressing that it is the major threat to the security of the nation. He noted that if security is threatened in the country, it is the worst threat and all hand must be on deck to arrest the challenges.

“Due to the high level of unemployment in the country, our organisation have to step out of the box to see what we can working with the government and other government parastatal to review the challenges and find a way out of it”.

“Our ideal is to see how we can get our children out of the street and take them to the factory. For this to happen, we see the importance of technical and vocational education”.

Responding the principal of GSTC Mrs. Bose Imafidon thanked the government of Edo State, ITF and NECA for the kind gesture promising that the school will properly utilised the equipment donated to the school to the benefits of the student and the state.