Issues of Vocational and Technical Education On Vision 20 2020

Nigeria is Oil-rich but has been limped by political instability, corruption, insecurity, inadequate infrastructure, and poor macroeconomic management. Leaders have failed to diversify the economy away from its overdependence on the capital-intensive oil sector, which provides 95% of foreign exchange earnings and about 80% of budgetary revenues. Unemployment rate was 4.6% (2007est.). In 2009, of the total number of qualified secondary school students for enrollment into Universities and Polytechnics only 28% of them could be admitted,there is not enough vocational institutions that can handle the remaining 72%. The drop out figure from the educational system is put at over 30 Million, and the unemployed rate was 19.7 per cent with 52% of this unemployable i.e. have no specific skills.These indices do not support the country’s vision 20, 2020 if the citizens are not educated inline with global practices. Unfortunately, massive retrenchments in the formal sector of the economy keep rising. The 6-3-3-4 education system was developed for the vocationalization of the secondary school curriculum in Nigeria. Nigeria has more than 250 vocational/technical institutions offering various technical programmesbut the number of teachers isinadequate, electricity is epileptic, there is low morale. The society lacks skilled technicians: bricklayers, carpenters, and auto-mechanics, laboratory and pharmacy technicians, electrical/electronic technicians etc. Vision 20, 2020 is scary; the government must aggressively train the youths in vocational and technical education so that the country will be more secured than it is now