Sustainable economic growth and physical development of nations are best anchored on their vocational and technical skills. Vocational and technical education is a critical bridge between secondary and tertiary education, providing the fundamental skills necessary for industrialisation and economic growth and development of any nation.
Vocational education which is extremely important in an economy is also known as vocational training (VT) or career and technical education (CTE), and is a type of education that prepares students for specific careers or industries. It focuses on providing students with practical skills, knowledge, and training in a particular trade, occupation, or field. These occupations or fields include, but not limited to furniture making, catering and hotel management, electrical installation, motor mechanics, building technology, welding and fabrication, fashion design, hair dressing and painting.
The origin of vocational education dates back to the beginning of human communities. Vocational education existed as traditions as people had to work for their survival. It was practiced within family circles. Under indigenous system or traditional vocational education, the Nigerian child was taught various skills through weaving, drumming, sculpturing, blacksmithing, carving, farming, fishing, cattle rearing, hair plaiting, dress making, bead weaving, drumming, leatherwork, pottery, brick laying, block making, basket weaving, raffia works, mat weaving and others.
Vocational education became unpopular in Nigeria because of the sudden exit of the colonial masters which left a big void in government offices that had to be filled by university graduates. For almost a hundred years in Nigeria, senior officers and elites were those who read classics, accounting, architecture, law, medicine and surgery, and engineering.
While great support was given to university students in the form of scholarship, bursary and school feeding, there was not such in vocational schools and there was no programme for vocational skills training in the formal education curriculum until 1909 when some form of vocational education programmes were opened in Nigeria. The Nassarawa School, opened in 1909 in the North, had a technical wing attached to it: leatherwork, carpentry, black-smithing, and weaving were taught.
The Hope Waddell Training Institute, Calabar, founded towards the tail end of the nineteenth century (1895), also had a technical wing attached to it. Tailoring and carpentry, among other crafts, were taught to students. Other early attempts at encouraging vocational education in Nigeria include: Boys’ Vocational School, Ididep, Ibiono, Akwa Ibom State in the forties, trained teachers in various types of crafts called “handwork”, making use of local raw materials, and Blaize Memorial Industrial School in Abeokuta ran a vocational programme for the youth.
In 1925, a Memorandum on Education Policy in British Tropical Africa was issued. The policy statement invited governments to take a more active part in the provision of technical education which required more costly equipment and properly qualified staff. Sequel to the foregoing the government opened trade centres and technical institutions across the country. Yaba Higher College was an instance of a technical education institution established in 1934. Technical and scientific education was provided by the government, commercial and industrial organisations in Nigeria during the early period.
The memorandum also encouraged the government to create departments for training technicians required for national development. Public Works Department (PWD), the Post and Telegraph Department (P & T), the Department of Agriculture, the Nigerian Railways Corporation (NRC) and other commercial and industrial ventures were among the government’s institutions that contributed towards the development of vocational technical education in Nigeria in the sixties and seventies.
Upon the official opening of the Yaba Higher College, engineering, medical, teacher training courses and agriculture were offered to the first set of students.
The ten-year development plan established in 1946 recommended an expansion of technical education which led to the establishment of 14 craft centres in the North, nine in the East, and two in Lagos. The education given at Yaba College was mainly vocational that led to the award of the college diploma. In 1946, the ten year development plan for the welfare of Nigerians was established.
The plan recommended an expansion of technical education to meet the demands for technicians and craftsmen. By 1952 there were three technical institutions located at Enugu, Kaduna and Yaba and seven trade centres and eighteen handicraft centres dotted all over the country.
The publication of the Ashby Commission Report in 1960 saw the opening of universities in the North, East and West of the country. The University of Nigeria, Nsukka in the East offered the first organised vocational – technical education (VTE) programme to be seen in West Africa.
The Commission report also recommended the introduction of technical streams in secondary schools and three levels of technical education in the country. In 1977 the Federal Government of Nigeria issued the first National Policy on Education. This policy has favoured the development of vocational education in the country since its formulation. The current issue of this policy (Federal Republic of Nigeria, 2004) seeks to achieve goals which emphasize technological development of Nigeria and subsequently provide solutions to the prevailing economic problems. To empower vocational education in the pursuit of the above goals and monitor its efforts in achieving quality learning, the government set up agents of quality assurance to do the job.
These agents are the National Commission for Colleges of Education (NCCE), the National Board for Technical Education (NBTE) and the National Universities Commission (NUC).
Features of vocational education are:
Practical skills training – Vocational education emphasises hands-on training and practical experience. Career-focused – Programmes are designed to prepare students for specific careers.
Industry-specific – training is targeted on entrepreneurship development.
Policy somersault led to the training of universities and polytechnics graduates that cannot be self-employed. Nigeria is now in dire need of vocational education and it is proven that while there is high rate of youth unemployment, Nigeria needs workers in trades like bricklaying, electrical installation, painting, tile-laying and carpentry for the construction industry which needs to meet about 28 million housing deficit and over 50,000 kilometre road deficit. It is a welcome idea that the Federal Government of Nigeria is encouraging Nigerian youths to embrace vocational education through payment of N45,000 per month as salary to vocational students.
