Re-Engineering Vocational and Technical Education for Creativity, Innovation and Youth Empowerment in Nigeria

Abstract

Vocational and technical education is a type of education that equips youths and adults with occupational skills for self or paid employment for sustainable livelihood. A robust attention of the government towards vocational and technical education is capable of equipping the teaming Nigerian youths with saleable entrepreneurial skills for meaningful technological development and survival in the present economic recession. The achievement of sustainable economic development through skill empowerment of the youths requires collaborative efforts and strong commitments on the part of educational institutions, training providers, employers 
and government. This paper x-rayed the role of vocational and technical education in nation-building, the relevance of VTE in creativity and innovative development of the youth, unemployment among Nigeria youth, national insecurity implication of youth unemployment, VTE and youth empowerment, the inter-linkages among the major variables of interest in a functional VTE structure and multidisciplinary approach to VTE development for youth empowerment. Efforts must be made to mobilize the youth for nation-building through government developmental plans to offer them the right opportunity to showcase their talents, gifts, creative thinking, and innovative capacity. To achieve this, it was recommended among others that vocational and technical education research findings should be recommended and properly implemented, infrastructures and other facilities such as workshops, computers, 
machinery, constant electricity, water etc should be provided in our vocational and technical institutions so as to facilitate the teaching/learning process.