The National Automotive Design and Development Council (NADDC) has trained more than 8,000 Nigerians to ensure that the country has skilled labour to support its automotive transformation.

Mr Jelani Aliyu, the Director-General, NADDC, disclosed this in Keffi, Nasarawa State, on Tuesday at a sensitisation workshop on assessment and certification of beneficiaries of the N-Power/NADDC auto-mechatronics training.

Aliyu, represented by Mr Waheed Odetoro, Director, Industrial and Infrastructure Department, NADDC, said skills training was one of the most important goals of the Council.

He said that the Federal Government in 2013 launched the Nigerian Automotive Industrial Development Plan, one of whose cardinal elements was skills development and promotion.

The News Agency of NIgeria (NAN) reports that the Federal Government had in October 2013 approved the implementation of the National Automotive Industry Development Plan (NAIDP).

The focal point of the plan is economic development through employment creation, Gross Domestic Product contribution, economic linkages, development of the small, medium and micro-enterprises in the sector, skills development as well as innovation and technology transfer.

Its mission is to create an enabling environment for the manufacture of Nigerian-made vehicles of international standards at competitive prices using local human and material resources.

Aliyu said that in order to achieve the mandate, the Council embarked on many programmes and projects aimed at skills upgrade in the automotive sector in collaboration with relevant stakeholders.

“We want to ensure that there is value for money for all the vehicles that will be rolled out from the assembly operation for the manufacturing plant to support the country’s need on maintenance.

“This is very important because it will go a long way to ensure that Nigeria will get long term service for whatever the country purchases,” he said.

According to him, the Council is planning to build seven automobile training centres where training will be done and a token will be charged as NADDC internally generated revenue.

He said that the seven centres would be established the first stage and expressed the hope that more centres would be built to support the dream of Nigerian-made vehicles.

The NADDC director-general said that the Council was collaborating with the National Business and Technical Examinations Board (NABTEB) for the training.

Mr Suleiman Yusuf, Programme Officer, National Board for Technical Education (NBTE), Kaduna, said that N-Power was meant to fast-track the development of Nigerian youths, especially in the automotive sector.

Yusuf said that the training was a welcome development as the country looked forward to having made-in-Nigeria vehicles.

He urged the participants to ensure that they made use of what they learnt in order to provide more jobs for Nigerians.

N-Power Build is an accelerated training and certification programme that engages and trains young unemployed Nigerians to build a new crop of skilled and highly competent workforce of technicians, artisans and service professionals. (NAN)

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