BusinessDay 17 Dec 2017

SUNDAY
BD
Lazarus Angbazo
Angbazo is president and CEO, GE Nigeria.
We are celebrating
one year of one of
our skills building
programmes – GE
Lagos Garages. I
am very pleased and proud to note
that we have successfully trained
over 140 Nigerian entrepreneurs
on advanced manufacturing and
business development training.
We are leveraging The Lagos
Garage today to officially release
a whitepaper titled ‘The Future of
Work in Nigeria – Bridging the Skills
Gap: The Key to Unlocking Nigeria’s
Inherent Potential’.
The paper is based on a survey
that GE commissioned to baseline the
skills gaps and impact in key industry
sectors, and to address ways to address
these gaps. We are very grateful to
leaders and companies in oil and gas,
transportation, healthcare, and power
who participated in the survey.
The skills of a nation’s citizens
determine the quality of its
infrastructure and speed of
advancement. When the level of
available skill does not match the
requirements for building new
infrastructure or maintaining
existing ones, the country must make
investments and create roles to put its
people back on the path of progress.
news you can trust I Sunday 17 December 2017
Building a world that works better
Because skilled labour is a critical
consideration for global investment
and urban development, having the
right people with the right skills for
the right jobs has never been more
important.
Nigerians are known for their
diligence, doggedness, and resiliency
in the face of the most challenging
operating environment. The challenge
lies with the skills shortage required
to move the country forward. The
widest gap in required skills is in the
technical areas.
Let me point out some opportunities.
Our report estimates that the average
age of workers in the power sector
prior to privatisation was about 52
years. You may ask: where are the
young professionals in the power
sector?
The youth deficit in power can be
attributed in part to the decreasing
number of university and polytechnic
applications for engineering and
sciences. For example, only 13.24
percent of admissions applications
target engineering and other technical
courses. In comparison, 23.35 percent
applications are for social sciences.
Therefore, Nigeria needs a serious
reorientation towards the importance
of Science, Technology, Engineering
and Mathematics (STEM).
In the transportation sector, despite
the successful privatisation of Nigeria’s
ports concessions, the country faces
rising capacity constraints. The
main cargo terminals, road and rail
infrastructure across the country
require significant investment. We
also need significant investments in
transport planning and management
skills as well as technical roles.
The oil and gas sector is
very technically intensive. Most
International Oil Companies (IOC)
bridged this gap by hiring large
numbers of expatriates to occupy
positions believed to be too technical
or strategic for local human resources
to handle. However, the government
enacted the Nigerian Oil and Gas
Industry Content Development Act
in 2010 to increase the level of local
participation and beneficiation in
the industry. Some progress has been
made but the sector continues to lack
the adequate local capacity in the
critical technical areas.
Nigeria’s health system has also
deteriorated over time due to a
substantial skills gap caused mainly
by the mass migration of capable
healthcare workers to more developed
economies. The health industry has
been one of the worst hit areas of
the economy by ‘brain-drain’, with
large numbers of nurses, doctors and
physicians now practicing abroad.
Reasons given for their emigration
include poor remuneration, lack of a
conducive work environment, and
lack of infrastructure.
As GE, we are committed to
building a world that works better.
We are committed to building skills
to meet critical needs and fill skills
gaps domestically and globally. We
understand that there is no one-sizefits-all
approach to skills development.
What is constant being the need for
both the public and private sector
to come together to ensure that the
education system is producing the
necessary skills for the countries’
current and future needs.
Being an excerpt from a presentation
made at the General Electric (GE) Lagos
Garage Showcase and unveiling of GE’s
‘Future of Work in Nigeria’ whitepaper
report, Monday, December 11, 2017.
C002D5556
Week
Quotes of the
“The letter dated October 5 was never
signed by me. Maina’s case, up to that point,
was still work in progress and I wrote KIV on it.
Again, the letter of February 21 could not have
emanated from my office because it did not
follow procedure. The matter is under investigation”.
Abubakar Malami, Minister of Justice
and Attorney General of the Federation.
“From our records, Maina received his last
salary in February 2013. In March 2013, he
was removed from the payroll. The civil service
operated an automated payment system which
would have shown such. I don’t know from
where he received the salary. There is nobody
with the name Abdulrasheed Maina in our
system.” Ahmed Idris, Accountant-General of
the Federation.
“I think it’s important to be mindful of both
the power of these tools but also its limits,”
Obama said, when asked about the dangers
of Twitter, a platform on which Trump has
caused repeat controversies. What I would
say is Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp, all these
various platforms are extraordinarily powerful
tools, and those tools can be used for good and
the tools can be used for ill”. Barack Obama,
former US president.
Numbers
1.5%
The Nigerian equities market maintained a significant
bullish trend this week as the All-Share Index
appreciated by 1.5 per cent week-to-date to close
at a three-month high of 37,944.60 basis points.
$50m
The sky seems to be the limit for Chinese online
shopping portal Taobao, which auctioned
off two Boeing 747 jumbo jets on Tuesday for
nearly $50 million.
Blogs
From the
The Internet is replete with dangers for
the unwary user and the unprotected
computer. Some experts say as many as
100 new viruses are created daily, infecting
computers around the world. While many
of those viruses are essentially harmless,
merely causing a popup message that says
“Merry Christmas” or temporarily moving
things around on the computer’s desktop,
a fair number of them are truly dangerous,
destroying millions of dollars’ worth of data
every year.
Viruses are only one type of program that
falls under the category of “Malware.” Malware
are programs the user does not want,
but that are installed on their computer by
some inadvertent action by the computer
user. Many of them are distributed attached
to emails, free programs, and other downloads
from the Internet. Once in the computer,
they do what they were intended
to do, and never is it beneficial to the computer
or the computer’s owner.
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