By Adebola Muili
For Dr Afiz Oluwatoyin Ogun, the future of Nigeria’s workforce cannot be secured by waiting for government or the private sector to create enough jobs for everyone.
It must begin with giving people the skills to create value, earn a living, build businesses and compete for opportunities wherever they exist.
That philosophy appears to be shaping Ogun’s leadership of the Industrial Training Fund (ITF), where he has placed skills acquisition, certification, employability, entrepreneurship and productivity at the heart of the organisation’s intervention programmes.
Since assuming office as Director-General and Chief Executive of the ITF in October 2023, Ogun has pursued an approach that seeks to make skills development more than a training exercise.
Under his leadership, the emphasis has increasingly been on what happens after the training: whether beneficiaries can secure employment, establish sustainable businesses, meet industry standards and take their skills beyond Nigeria.
Over the years, the ITF has trained and empowered more than 25 million Nigerians through various skills-development interventions, according to the Fund. Under Ogun’s leadership, that mandate has taken on renewed urgency, with greater emphasis on certification, employability, entrepreneurship and the ability of beneficiaries to compete in the formal economy and beyond.
For Ogun, one of the biggest opportunities lies in Nigeria’s vast pool of artisans and technically skilled workers.
Millions of Nigerians have acquired expertise through apprenticeship and years of practical experience. Yet, without recognised certification, many remain confined to the informal economy, with limited access to major contracts, formal employment and international opportunities.
It is against this background that the Skill-Up Artisans (SUPA) Programme has become one of the most visible expressions of Ogun’s skills-development agenda.
Giving Informal Skills Formal Recognition
SUPA is designed to identify practising artisans, assess their existing competencies, upgrade their skills and provide pathways to recognised certification.
The idea is significant.
An artisan may have spent 10 or 20 years learning a trade, but years of experience alone may not provide the formal recognition required by employers, contractors or international markets.
Through structured assessment and training, Ogun’s ITF is seeking to bridge that gap.
The foundation phase of SUPA graduated 29,000 artisans in 2024, while subsequent phases were designed to accommodate significantly more beneficiaries.
Screening was conducted across the country’s 90 senatorial districts, while the ITF also moved to assess and accredit training centres.
But for Ogun, training is only the beginning.
The bigger question is whether the artisan can demonstrate competence and convert that competence into economic opportunity.
Taking Nigerian Artisans Beyond the Borders
This is where the certification component of the programme becomes particularly important.
In 2026, more than 7,000 Nigerian artisans were undergoing international certification examinations across 27 states and 28 centres, with the ITF reporting an investment of more than ₦700 million in the exercise.
An earlier pilot programme in Abuja involved more than 200 artisans.
The significance goes beyond the certificates.
For an artisan whose expertise has previously existed largely outside the formal system, recognised certification can provide evidence of competence and potentially open doors to larger contracts, formal employment and opportunities outside Nigeria.
It is an attempt to change the perception of the Nigerian artisan from someone merely practising a trade to a skilled professional whose competence can be assessed against recognised standards.
That distinction is central to Ogun’s approach.
Building the People Who Train Others
But developing a skilled workforce requires more than training beneficiaries.
It also requires qualified instructors and assessors capable of maintaining standards and passing knowledge to the next generation.
In August 2026, the ITF commenced an eight-week programme for 100 artisans and trainers, with the participation of trainers from the United Kingdom.
The programme exposes participants not only to their respective trades but also to teaching, training and assessment.
Those who complete the programme are expected to acquire Trade Level 3, teaching and training, and assessor qualifications.
The multiplier effect is significant.
A skilled artisan can provide a service to customers. A skilled artisan who is also qualified to teach and assess can help produce another generation of competent workers.
For a country facing a substantial skills gap, that capacity-building model could prove more valuable in the long term than simply increasing the number of people trained.
From Training to Enterprise
Another feature of Ogun’s approach is the effort to ensure that skills acquisition does not end with certificates.
Nigeria has seen numerous empowerment programmes in which beneficiaries receive equipment or starter packs but struggle to build sustainable enterprises.
The ITF’s current direction attempts to address that weakness by linking skills with business development.
For the 2026 SUPA cycle, the Federal Government approved ₦3.6 billion for a business-incubation component targeting about 200,000 artisans.
The model is designed to provide structured support and equipment to qualifying beneficiaries.
The underlying principle is straightforward: equipment alone does not create a successful business.
An artisan needs the technical competence to use the equipment, business knowledge to manage an enterprise, access to customers and markets, mentorship and professional standards.
It is the combination that can turn an empowerment intervention into a sustainable livelihood.
Connecting Skills With the Real Economy
Ogun’s emphasis on industry linkages is also reflected in the ITF’s collaboration with the Nigeria Employers’ Consultative Association (NECA).
Through the Technical Skills Development Project, classroom instruction is combined with practical training, industrial attachment and entrepreneurship development.
The programme covers numerous trade areas, including electrical and electronic maintenance, welding and fabrication, ICT, mechatronics, plumbing, construction, solar installation and refrigeration.
The model addresses a fundamental weakness in conventional skills programmes: training people without sufficiently connecting them to the labour market.
A successful skills intervention should therefore answer more than one question.
What can the trainee do?
Who needs the skill?
And can the trainee turn that competence into sustainable income?
The direction of the ITF under Ogun increasingly attempts to answer all three.
A Different Way of Looking at Empowerment
At the heart of Ogun’s approach is an argument that empowerment should not be measured only by the number of people who receive training or equipment.
The more important measure is what those people are able to do afterwards.
Can they secure better employment?
Can they attract larger contracts?
Can they establish businesses?
Can those businesses survive?
Can they employ other Nigerians?
That is where skills development becomes economic development.
For Nigeria, the stakes are considerable.
The country has a youthful population, a large informal economy and persistent gaps between what employers require and what many job seekers can offer.
At the same time, thousands of Nigerian artisans possess practical expertise that remains largely undocumented or uncertified.
Bringing that talent into a structured system of training, assessment and certification could strengthen individual livelihoods while also improving the productivity of the wider economy.
The Ogun Legacy
The significance of Afiz Ogun’s leadership at the ITF may ultimately be determined by whether he can help turn that potential into lasting economic value.
The 25-million figure associated with the Fund’s cumulative skills interventions demonstrates the scale of the institution’s historical reach.
But Ogun’s challenge is to make the next phase of that journey more productive: to ensure that training produces competence, competence earns recognition, recognition creates opportunity and opportunity translates into sustainable livelihoods.
That is why programmes such as SUPA, international certification, trainer development, business incubation and industry partnerships matter.
They represent different parts of the same proposition.
That Nigeria’s skills challenge cannot be solved simply by telling people to acquire skills.
The country must build systems that recognise those skills, improve them, certify them and connect them to the economy.
For Ogun, that appears to be the direction.
Through the ITF, he is seeking to turn skills from instruments of survival into tools of economic advancement, while building on an institution that has already touched the lives of millions of Nigerians.
If that effort is sustained, the ultimate legacy may not be the number of people trained under his watch, but the number of Nigerians who are able to turn what they have learnt into productive work, successful businesses and opportunities for others.
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