In his keynote address at the event, the Director-General, LSC, Mr. Lanre Mojola, implored youths to embrace entrepreneurship and vocational skills, as it would help them contribute to the economic growth of the state and the country in general, aside from being self-reliant and employers of labour.
Mojola maintained that vocational and entrepreneurship-training programme engaged the youths in activities that would make them contribute to the socio-economic development of the society and shun vices capable of undermining the development efforts of the state government
According to him, once they have one or two vocational training, barely one or two years, they would be employers of labour, hence our decision to team up with LBS to take a safety survey of vocational institutions and have safety data of the centres.
“Our job is based on data and it is also scientific. We all can see that various vocational training embarked upon by the present administration, among others, were in tandem with the security and governance pillar of the T.H.E.M.E.S development agenda of the state,” he said.
Mojola further said that the objective of the specialised survey was to promote policies, programmes and projects of the state and to also look at its approach to safety, adding that “there is no better policy in a society than pursuing the health and safety of its people, which can only be got through data.”
Earlier, the Deputy Director, Lagos Bureau of Statistics, Baruwa Basit, who represented his director, Mr. Tayo Oseni-Ope, explained that statistics counts in whatever one does as far as governance is concerned, adding that statistics reveal that vocational studies are one of the ingredients that make the country relevant in the comity of nations.
Basit, who described the vocational training programme as the best way of empowering youths, said that some of the graduating trainees had started making money with their new vocations and even employing others, adding that they should see the training to empower themselves in terms of safety and technical enhancement.
“We are trying to look at our school system, vocational institutions and all entrepreneurship centres as well as the academic members of staff. Six per cent of those in Lagos are from the informal sector, hence the reason our agency is collaborating with the Lagos State Safety Commission is that, in this dispensation and present times, the importance of safety in our society cannot be overemphasized”, he said.
