Dr Ifeanyi Nwafor, Nigerian business man has urged government at all levels to invest more in training programmes in order to build a skilled workforce that would add value to global economies.
Nwafor gave the advice in Abuja on Tuesday in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) ahead of the celebration of the nation’s Democracy Day slated for June 12.
He said building a highly skilled and educated workforce was very important in a global community and would enable Nigeria compete favourably.
He noted that companies in advanced countries such as the United States, Canada and Britain among others , outsource some of the Information Technology (IT) jobs in countries like Malaysia and India.
‘The reason they are going there is because these countries have a highly educated workforce, which can be easily trained to do some of the tasks that would had been done in their countries.
‘So, we want the government to look into how to improve our educational systems and training programmes to enable us co
mpete with all these countries.
‘Many companies channel money into these countries to hire their workers, to set up infrastructure to do all these in these places,’ he said.
Nwafor, who is the Managing Director, Metrodigital Ltd., said Nigeria needed to make more investments in terms of improving the educational sector.
He said that if Nigeria had a highly trained workforce, companies like Microsoft would come and carry out their software development.
According to him, companies like Apple and others can also come to invest in the country as a result of the trained and skillful workforce.
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The Metrodigital boss also lauded Nigeria’s hard earned democracy in the last 25 years, saying democracy had indeed brought dividends to Nigerians.
He said with democracy, government was able to revolutionalise the telecom industry which led to massive investment in telecom infrastructure in the country.
According to him, th
e telecom giants like MTN, Globacom, 9mobile, Airtel among others have dominated the Nigerian telecom market.
He said that they brought affordable telecommunication services to almost every part of Nigeria.
‘There has been tremendous progress made in the financial services sector, as new companies such as PayPal, Flutterwave, Opay, Moniepoint among others, have also emerged in the last few years.
‘These have really revolutionalised financial services in a way, making e-commerce possible and with the advent of Fintech, people can now sit back in their homes and make orders in Jumia or Konga.
‘Every market woman or man can have his/her Point of Sales(POS) and be able to accept credit card payments.
‘These are all improvements in technology that emerged over the last several years as a result of democracy in the country,’ Nwafor said.
He urged governments to continue to make more progress by creating more enabling environment for more companies to thrive.
Source: News Agency of Nigeria