Hajiya Hadiza Bulama is the former coordinator, National Directorate of Employment (NDE), Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja. In this interview with some Labour correspondents,she expresses concern over the plight of almajiris in the North, and how she is using her retirement and experience in the area of soft skills to curb unemployment, among other issues. Soji-Eze Fagbemi was there. Excerpts:YOU recently resigned from the service of NDE. As a former deputy director and the past coordinator of the FCT office, what are you engaged in at the momentI am into consultancy on skills acquisition and small scale enterprises. You know, in this country, we have a lot of things to do. It is only for you to open your eyes and look around and see the things that are important and because of my background and my knowledge in job creation, I thought it would be wise for me to go into skills acquisition and small scale enterprises.What do you mean by skills acquisition and small scale enterprisesThe global economy is facing serious challenges and Nigeria is no different. We have a lot of people that are unemployed and it is not only in Nigeria but all over the world. There are so many people that are not working because of the global economic problems and therefore, there ought to be other means of creating jobs, and people must be specialised in one thing or the other. I thought I would be able to contribute my own quota in trying to make people acquire skills no matter their age. I think one people learn whatever they want to learn even at the age of 70 if they are serious because they say the brain, usually, doesnt get too old to acquire skills. I think if one is serious, there are many jobs that could be generated in the environment that we operate in today. As a human being, I see it as a challenge to humanity. When I have a job and other people dont have, or I have a way of getting one thing or the other and then my immediate community is suffering because they dont have something they can do to make money to meet their needs, I feel bad. I think teaching somebody how to do something is worthwhile. If you have knowledge, share it with those who require it because knowledge is humanity. How do you intend to inculcate skills in your target audienceI am not operating an NGO (Non-Governmental Organisation). I registered a consultancy firm some time ago but it had been dormant, therefore I thought I should revive it. The consultancy firm focusses basically on skill acquisition and some contract businesses. The name of the firm is Muhandisun Consultancy Limited. We have about 10 people working with us and I am a director in the company. Our headquarters is in Abuja here and we have a small outfit in Maiduguri and Damaturu.Specifically, what have you been able to put in place now Right now, because of my background which I told you about earlier, I know the kind of skills that I will impart in people that will have a good effect. I had a research of 10 years and I basically know that such skills will thrive and they can be sustained. There is no point teaching somebody what he cannot do or sustain. Skills acquisition itself has a lot of components; the environment determines the availability of raw materials, the human capacity is there and you have other factors like the physical factors. My own kind of work basically has to do with the hard skills and a new trend that I have just learnt.In this country, we only apply the hard skills and always forget that there is the aspect of humanity which we have to touch and that is the soft skill. If you emphasise the hard skills at the expense of soft skills, I think you will have a big problem and that is why you see some businesses failing.One, you should learn how to speak, learn how to convince, learn how to sell the goods, not on credit because one day if you come to ask for money, you may not even see your debtor and that will be the beginning of doom for such as individual. There are many important things, but communication is the most important of the soft skills, and even the manner one dresses determines the kind of products that he or she will take to the market. So, we have a long way to go in dealing with this perspective. The emphasis today is on skill acquisition; when you acquire other skills but the soft skills are not there, it is as if you have cooked soup without adding salt or you are taking pap without sugar. I recently learnt this outside the shores of this country.Who are your target audienceYou see, I am an all rounder; an all rounder in the sense that knowledge is for everybody and it does not differentiate. My concern is to deal with people of internationally accepted age of labour which is 18 and in some countries, 15 years. I have learnt and seen that things that are being produced by the underaged are not even being taken in the market. So, there is no point of even touching that angle. I concentrate on the ages of 18 up to 70 and I deal with youths, I deal with a lot of women also and the vulnerable ones like the almajiris and also people with disabilities.Talking of the almajiris which abound in virtually the whole northern states, have you started anything on training, whether in collaboration with government or on your ownOn my own, I contacted the Islamic Research Institute based here in Abuja under the leadership of Imam Nura Khalid and we are able to, as of now, get about 100 almajiris from different locations in Abuja and we are going to train them on some skills. The government has been doing a lot for the almajiris; giving the money for the Sangaya and putting them in conventional schools. We then thought that somebody should add something to what the government is doing; we should not leave everything to government alone. Our contributions should be to assist one another and I feel the Islamic institute and Muhandisun Consultants are now working hand in hand to impart skills.We are just starting, but we will handle about 100 almajiris of different ages. Like I told you, we will not work with the underage, what we will do with those almajiris that are underage is that we will teach them basic hygiene because they need to know that hygiene is part of religion and the malams should also be aware that leaving these children dirty and hungry will not solve the problem because the Holy Quran itself does not encourage this attitude at all. It wants us to take care of one another. Most of these children come from villages and I am telling you between man and God, the parents of these children sent them to learn the Quran so as to be knowledgeable in the Quran, that is all. They are not even looking at the worldly materials; no, they want the religion to be a kind of guide to them in adulthood and that will encourage them to contribute to economic development of the country. When they come here, surprisingly, the malams, maybe because of economic hardship, end up not being able to take care of the children. They leave them going about begging, which is not allowed in Islam. I am saying all these because of my own scheme.By imparting skills to those of them that are grown up, they can sell the products that they produced together with their malams and raise up some little funds to address some crucial things.As a private body, do you have the resources with which to resettle those you trainLike the set of people that we just finished with, we encourage them to open a bank account with microfinance banks. I am working with Fortis Microfinance Bank in Wuse Market, in Abuja. Along the line, they have been able to assist a few of our own people that we have sent to them.With the little money that one has, one can go into the market. For example, I have imparted knowledge on some women on pastry making, and before we even finished the training, they had started selling their products. I asked them how they got the money to start their own businesses and they said it was from the little savings they had. They used it to buy some flour, and because of their expertise, they were getting a lot of orders; they are making it.Back to the issue of almajiris, you know these are the hardest hit people and the government has been spending a lot on these people. I am yet to see anybody, I may be proven wrong, going to take the whole responsibility of these Almajiris in a state or region; I am yet to hear that.What we want to do under this organisation is that we want to involve all and sundry; anybody that has interest should come and meet us and we will look at the various variables and see which one will be applicable. We have conducted a series of research on skills that we will impart on these people and Im sure they will not go back again into begging.We look at things like barbing, which you know is very easy to do and which will not disturb their education. In all we do, we are very careful about the setup of the Islamic curriculum so that we dont interfere with that because there would be strong opposition if we did.
Click here to read full news..
