Business a.m.
Dangote Cement Plc, a leading player in the Nigerian cement industry, has launched a new internship scheme for students in tertiary institutions across the country. The programme offers a fully funded, one-year internship to selected candidates, providing them with a hands-on learning experience.
Tunde Mabogunje, the Lagos regional sales director of Dangote Cement Plc, made the disclosure during the induction of the pioneer batch of Yaba College of Technology (Yabatech) students.
Mabogunje said the new internship scheme has been carefully designed to offer practical experience to outstanding engineering students from higher institutions across the country.
Explaining the rationale behind the scheme, Mabogunje explained that it forms part of the company’s Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) efforts, aimed at providing a distinctive platform for engineering students to transfer the theoretical knowledge and practical skills they have acquired in classrooms and laboratories to real-world industrial settings. He noted that by blending their academic learning with hands-on training and on-field experience, students will emerge from the programme as well-rounded engineers, better equipped to pursue successful careers in the field.
“We are kicking off this phase of the scheme in Lagos and Kano States. A total of 20 students are involved with 10 students selected from each of the two states. In selecting the interns, we wrote to the authorities of Yaba College of Technology and Kano Polytechnic requesting for the list of the best performing students in Building Studies.
“We are to train the selected students on the right application of cement with specific reference to Dangote Cement in accordance with Standard Organisation of Nigeria (SON) prescriptions. The interns are to be deployed to various building project sites while technical officers from Dangote Cement will be on the ground to monitor them,” he said.
The Dangote Cement sales director, emphasised that the internship scheme reflects the company’s firm conviction that the acquisition of vocational and technical skills is critical to the health and vitality of any sector, as well as the overall well-being of the economy.
Mabogunje stated further: “They are vital prerequisite for growth. However, dearth of vocational and technical skills has had an adverse effect on the building sector. This internship programme is apt and a major step in the right direction towards addressing the gap. As trainees gain practical field experience, they will be well-prepared to become well-rounded professionals and make significant contributions to the industry.
“At Dangote Group, we are committed to providing vocational training to young Nigerians to equip them with a range of valuable skills. To address gaps in some of our plants, we recruited graduates from engineering and technology-based programmes and trained them in various aspects of industrial operations. These technicians were subsequently deployed to our plants in Obajana, Ibese, Gboko, as well as our sugar and salt refineries in Apapa and Ikeja. They have demonstrated that, with the right training and orientation, young Nigerians excel in every assignment they undertake.
“For our oil refinery and fertiliser plant, we recruited hundreds of graduates of Engineering based courses and sent them abroad for training. This set of professionals are now running the new plants and are training other sets of engineers through skill transfer.
“We provide vocational training programmes for our host communities. The youths are veritable assets in any society and the quality of the youths determines the outlook of tomorrow’s society. Therefore, an investment in developing vocational skills among youths will yield the desired results.”
In his remark, Ibraheem Adedotun Abdul, the rector of Yaba College of Technology, commended Dangote Cement management for the scheme, describing it as a landmark achievement in Corporate Social Responsibility.
Abdul expressed his delight at Yaba College of Technology being chosen as one of the pioneer institutions for the scheme, assuring the Dangote Cement management that the participating students would rise to the occasion and fulfill the programme’s goal of bridging the gap between academic performance and real-world experience
The rector noted that the internship programme offers participating students a unique opportunity to apply the theoretical knowledge they have acquired in their fields of study to practical situations, thus allowing them to develop the skills and competencies required to transition from being students to being productive members of the engineering profession.
