Director General of the Industrial Training Fund (ITF), Dr. Oluwatoyin Afiz Ogun, says the directive of President Bola Tinubu that 20 million artisans across the country be empowered has begun.
Dr. Ogun said the scheme, Skill Up Artisan, (SUPAR) has started yielding positive results.
The ITF boss spoke in Akure, the Ondo State capital, while addressing artisans and chieftains of the All Progressives Congress (APC) led by the convener of Ibigiga Ambassadors, Dr Alex Ajipe.
Ogun explained that the initiative was to ensure that artisans in the country could compete favourably with their counterparts across the world and provide a platform to make them become millionaires.
According to him, “I have started pursuing it (the 20 million artisans uplift). I am not just going to pursue it, I have started. They can testify. The artisans can testify. That is why I call them my primary constituency.
“President Bola Ahmed Tinúbu has given us that mandate to lift up five million artisans and we are prepared to do that. They can testify.
“There is job in Nigeria because if there is no job, how come people (artisans) from Ghana will come here and get jobs easily? How come people from Benin Republic, Togo and all those places will come to take our artisanal job and they are doing well. Some of them become millionaires and take our money back home.
“Why are they taking our jobs? It is because the quality of our job has reduced, because of quacks who do not really train well break away from their masters and go form their own. We don’t want that to happen again, we want a quality artisanal job”.
