Gombe Tech Training: Pantami’s Call for a Paradigm Shift By Muhd El-Bonga Ibraheem
If you want to build a great nation, your surest bet is education. Quality, skill-based education has consistently proven to be the major difference between developed nations and those wallowing in all-round deformities. Countries like China, Singapore, and Taiwan have clearly demystified this undeniable fact. When a nation prioritises the skills of its populace, the inevitable outcome is holistic development.
In Japan, secondary school students are enrolled in two-year vocational and technical colleges to acquire skills in high-demand areas before proceeding to the university. Even if they do not advance to higher education, they already possess valuable training in diverse areas such as technology, digital skills, graphic design, artificial intelligence, animation, robotics, and multimedia. This explains why Japan remains a global model of technological advancement today.
In his book, Skills Rather than Just Degrees, Professor Isa Ali Pantami emphasises that, in addition to academic qualifications, one must acquire modern-day twenty-first-century skills in line with the prevailing Fourth Industrial Revolution which is reshaping the world in almost every sphere. He also points to countries like Switzerland and India, which have prioritised skills and are achieving remarkable success.
Through the Professor Pantami Foundation, some carefully selected youths have, in recent weeks, been drawn from the nooks and crannies of Gombe to benefit from an ongoing digital skills training programme manned by some top Arewa tech experts like Salisu Abdurrazak Saheel and Yahaya Abubakar. The training incorporates areas such as artificial intelligence, phone repairs, and cybersecurity, among others. The central aim is to equip young people with skills that are in demand, making them self-reliant, employable, and even potential employers of labour. From a pool of more than 30,000 applicants across Gombe and neighbouring states, the first batch has already been selected.
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Anyone who interacts with Prof. Pantami will attest to his passion for youth empowerment and digital skills. He strongly believes that Nigeria possesses the inimitable potential to produce a highly skilled youthful population capable of serving our domestic needs and even exporting talent abroad, provided this potential is fully harnessed.
Pantami frequently references the Indian Institute of Technology which produces millions of skilled professionals across different fields—especially IT-related areas—that are now occupying strategic positions in leading companies across Europe and America. Today, Indians dominate many top positions in the global tech industry. Years ago, India deliberately charted a new course by using ICT to drastically reduce unemployment. That strategic shift now injects millions of jobs annually into the Indian labour force.
Last week, I visited the venue of the training and witnessed passionate youths in their hundreds, deeply engaged with their devices and attentively following their instructors. One unforgettable moment was meeting one of my Facebook friends who had travelled all the way from Nafada—over 100 kilometres from the capital. He greeted me with an innocent, yet enthusiastic voice, and introduced himself. He was just one of the many lucky youths who earned the opportunity ahead of thousands of others, and there were several more like him from across Gombe State.
The purpose of the training is not only to enhance skills and create jobs but also to ensure these skills are multiplied across communities. Unlike Rarara’s one-to-tell-ten political praise song, this initiative is about one teaching three, three teaching three or four, and four teaching others. In this way, the ripple effect of the jobs created—both direct and indirect—will spread to the very nooks and crannies of the state.
For instance, if out of the first batch of two hundred and fifty selected beneficiaries, fifty establish their own workshops and each trains three others, that will create one hundred and fifty new jobs. If those one hundred and fifty also go on to train three people each, the number rises to four hundred and fifty. These figures, though hypothetical, demonstrate the multiplier effect of skills development on job creation and economic growth.
Muhd El-Bonga Ibraheem writes from Federal University Kashere, Gombe State
