By YUSUFU IDEGU, Jos

A smart phone made by a Nigerian, assembled in Nigeria through local engineering, will soon hit market all over Nigeria.

The breakthrough was made possible with entrepreneural training provided by the Industrial Training Fund (ITF) for Nigerian youths.

Director General and Chief Executive of the Industrial Training Fund (ITF) Sir Joseph Ari, dropped the cheering news on Wednesday during a chat with journalists at the Center for Excellence, Bukuru Jos.

Sir Ari, who was reviewing the activities of ITF under his leadership, said: “ITF identified 6 key areas which it can create jobs to Nigerian youths. One of the key areas are ICT and Service sector.

“We have trained thousands of Nigeria in these two areas, one of our trainees has produced a smart phone, we have used it and found it with the same capacity and functioning like any smart phone in the world.

“The phone is made fully in Nigeria, assembled with local technology including locally sourced raw materials.

“Efforts are on by ITF to mass-produced this phone and flood Nigerian market at a competitively cheaper rate. We will eventually send that Nigerian smart phone to international market that will earn the country foreign exchange.

“The secret of any industrial development anywhere in the world is skills acquisition, it is the catalyst for industrial growth of any nation. That was how countries like Japan, Germany, Brazil, Indonesia, etc, became industrial giants.

“With the massive skills training of Nigerian youths in the last five years, the nation has already gone far in its quest to attain industrial development.

“ITF has concentrated on 6 key areas that will generate mass employment for job seekers in Nigeria like in the area of construction, agricultural value chain, solid minerals, ICT and Service Sector. These areas have the capacity to generate jobs in millions.

“These are deliberate efforts to close the skill gaps identified when we carried out a Skill Gap Survey in 2017. So far we have trained over a million Nigerians and the figure will increase henceforth because we have created new area office and skill training centers across the country.”

Sir Ari said the government of President Muhammadu Buhari has paid premium to small and medium scale entrepreneurs because of its capacity to create jobs to millions of Nigerians.

He said ITF has declared the year 2021 as a year of “skill escalation for posterity”, adding: “It simply means we will double our human capital development mandate so as to put the nation on the path of economic posterity.”

Update news