Certificate Racket Rocks Lagos Technical College

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Ambode

The fact that employers and employees in Nigeria are certificate driven is not debatable. Different analysts have come to know it as a craze to acquire certificates rather than the primary objective of acquiring skills, which often results in producing a mass of unemployable graduates.

With the consistent recommendation that only vocational skills can rescue people from unemployment and the nation’s economy from depression, the Federal College of Education, Akoka, Lagos, has allegedly keyed into running schemes through Consult, an arm of the school that offers short courses in vocational skills, in conjunction with private vocational centres. This is a form of racket that many are talking about as giving such a respected institution as FCE a bad name.

The scheme, as we gathered, offers different vocational skills ranging from one-day professional nanny courses to cosmetology courses that span weeks. The requirements are not very stringent; O’level is the minimum requirement for the short courses, as we learned, while advanced diploma courses are targeted at health management workers who possess OND.

Our source said that the partnership was a 70/30 deal, with participants after graduating from the external centres, getting their certificates from FCE.

Our efforts to reach the FCE management were abortive as officials from the institution we tried to talk to would not speak. Now, it has been established that the attraction is the certificate from the FCE which lures people into the  programme.

-Gbenga Agboola