The Federal Government has formally ended years of institutional rivalry between the Industrial Training Fund and the National Board for Technical Education over the regulation of Nigeria’s skills development system, unveiling a new governance framework that clearly separates the responsibilities of both agencies.
The reforms, facilitated by the Office of the Vice President through the National Council on Skills, transfer the administration of the Nigerian Skills Qualification Framework, the Secretariat of the National Council on Skills and the Secretariat of WorldSkills Nigeria to the ITF, while the NBTE will focus exclusively on regulating formal technical and vocational education institutions.
The Executive Secretary of the NBTE, Prof. Idris Bugaje, and the Director-General of the ITF, Afiz Ogun, announced the breakthrough during a joint media briefing in Abuja on Thursday, describing it as the end of years of disagreements that had slowed efforts to build a coordinated national skills ecosystem.
For several years, both agencies had publicly disagreed over which institution should regulate the Nigerian Skills Qualification Framework and coordinate national skills development programmes, leading to overlapping mandates, public exchanges and concerns among stakeholders about duplication of responsibilities.
