Small and Medium Enterprise Development Agency of Nigeria (SMEDAN) says its educational model is a tool for securing employment, addressing poverty, and increasing the standard of living of Nigerians.

The SMEDAN chair Femi Pedro made the assertion during the SMEDAN Tertiary Institutions Entrepreneurship Development (TINEDEP) Programme held in Lagos on Monday.

Mr Pedro explained that the model focused on soft and hard skills acquisition to make lives flourish. He said it could tackle the increasing unemployment among youths, which had resulted in high rates of social vices in Nigeria.

Mr Pedro, quoting the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) unemployment rate of 33.3 per cent, said the increasing indices showed that unemployment and underemployment contributed largely to social unrest, kidnapping, and other vices.

“The unemployment and the underemployment problem is particularly pathetic, as the number of those coming out from various institutions looking for employment opportunity is alarmingly embarrassing,” he pointed out. “The economic miracles witnessed among the Asian Tigers, such as China, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, South Korea, and India, have clearly shown that development is driven by the people’s innovation, creativity, and enterprise.”

He added, “Unfortunately, Nigeria has not been able to enact similar feats owing to the poor linkage between knowledge and development and poor synergy between the private and the public sectors of the economy. This may have been due to our educational model, lack of appropriate skills, knowledge, and sufficient entrepreneurial culture.”

The SMEDAN chair called for the scaling up of infrastructure and human capital investments as practical strategies towards employment generation.

He explained that human capital development could be further facilitated through a well-structured, skill- and entrepreneurship-focused curriculum.

(NAN)