Lagos ADC governorship candidate proposes Singapore’s skills development model

Funso Doherty, Lagos governorship candidate for the African Democratic Congress (ADC) has suggested that Singapore’s skills development model offers Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial capital, insights into human capital management.

Doherty said this in a re-broadcast on Arise News’ BusinessWeek review, on Saturday. According to him, Lagos and Singapore are both coastal cities. Singapore is a republic, sovereign island country and city-state in maritime Southeast Asia.

“Singapore focused on developing skills, the type we get from technical and vocational education. This made the country attractive to companies because a pool of high-quality skills was readily available,” Doherty said. “Lagos can convert the over one million youth roaming the streets into skilled labour to attract more investments.”

Lagos is a federating unit of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and education is on the concurrent list. This means Lagos state has legislative powers in the sector. The federal list covers the subjects over which the federal government has exclusive legislative power, while the concurrent list contains subjects regarding which both the federal and provincial governments can enact laws.

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The Skills Development Levy Act of 1979 established the Skills Development Fund in October 1979. The National Wages Council recommended in June 1979 the establishment of a skills development fund supported by contributions from all Singapore employers.

This effort has been sustained. Since the Singapore Workforce Development Agency (WDA) was established in 2003 to coordinate all public training programmes the number of training places has steadily increased. 

By 2013, one out of every ten resident workers had received publicly funded (vocational) training, though this was calculated at the lowest denominator, achieving one “statement of attainment” – equivalent to one-tenth of a full qualification.

Ahead of the March 18 governorship and state house of assembly elections in Nigeria, political parties are jostling for votes. According to the Independent National Electoral Commission’s (INEC) final list of governorship and house of assembly candidates in Lagos, 16 candidates from various political parties are running for governor of Lagos state in 2023.