From Bode Durojaiye, Oyo.
A Professor of Agricultural Extension at the University of Ibadan, L. Akinbile, has attributed inability of the country’s educational system to provide youths with the demands of industries to the “turning out of restless and disconnected generation of future leaders”.
Akinbile stated this in a keynote address at the 7th Biennial
Conference and Exhibition, organised by the School of Vocational and Technical Education, Federal College of Education [Special], Oyo.
In his paper entitled: “Livelihood Sustenance And Economic Development Through Vocational And Technical Education”, the don said the rate of unemployment occasioned by dearth of openings in formal jobs is one of the causes of most of the present social and industrial unrest.
According to him, “more than half of the people of the world are living in conditions approaching misery. Their food is inadequate as they are victims of disease. Their economic life is primitive and stagnant. Poverty is a handicap and a threat both to them and to their areas. There is the need to make the benefits of the world’s store of technical knowledge available and adoptable, in order to help people realise their aspirations for a better life.’’
While pointing out that greater production has today become the key to prosperity and peace in a globalised world, he explained that this suggests that the key to greater production is a wider and more vigorous application of modern scientific and technical knowledge.
To this end, Professor Akinbile called for exploitation of vocational and technical education to achieve the much-needed transformation of world economy to achieve peaceful co-existence and the much-desired world peace through enhancing livelihood sustenance and ensuring economic development.
