The Business Development Manager of the Institute, Mr. Olorunshola Osasona disclosed this the 2022 Fashion Runway Show and graduation of Belart Institute of Fashion and Textiles in Asero, Abeokuta, the state capital.
Osasona reaffirmed the Institute’s drive to continuously showcase the immense talent of the youths by meaningfully engaging them in the society, show possibilities they can express, link them with other opportunities in Nigeria, especially in the fashion industry as it is a tool for social mobilization and create more enabling environment for them to thrive.
The business development manager corroborated the view of the governor’s aide on skill acquisition saying, it was right for the young ones as well as the youths to learn a skill before acquiring higher education, as it would keep them busy and productive and fashion was one of such skills to make them gainfully employed after their education which is not capital intensive.
In his goodwill message, the Special Adviser to the Governor on Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET), Prof. Joseph Odemuyiwa stated that the enormous entrepreneurial opportunities embedded in the fashion and textile industry has the capacity to provide jobs and make school leavers and youth self-reliant, contribute immensely to the economic development of Ogun State particular and Nigeria in general.
Odemuyiwa said” owing to its potentials, there was the need for stakeholders to work towards making the fashion and textile fashion industry, more economically viable to translate to job creation, tourism and promotion of culture, among others.
“The World of fashion is one that cannot be put away as there are enormous opportunities in the fashion industry. We recognize this as one of the foremost need of man and we have continued to promote technical and vocational education in that line and the fashion and textile industry is well captured in our several interventions.
“We have continued to train and expose those in the formal and informal sectors in the fashion industry, in collaboration with our partners to trainings to further enhance their capacity and we have had favourable outcomes”, Odemuyiwa said.
The governor’s aide revealed that the State’s government campaign on the need to embrace at least, a trade subject by secondary school students and vocation for graduates irrespective of their specialization and level of education has helped to reduce unemployment, insecurity, youth restiveness among others, stressing that education without skill or vocation was no education hence, people must embrace education that is all-encompassing.
He promised governor Abiodun’s continued support and collaboration with the private sector to further make the sector attractive for the youth to explore, appreciating the graduates as well as the Institute for taking such bold step to be skilled, the successful completion of the programme and for contributing to the state’s achieve its desire of empowering the youths through technical and vocational education (TVET).
Also speaking, Head, Development Finance, Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Abeokuta, Dr. Oluyemisi Olukoya, said a lot of people were not aware of the enormous interventions of the Bank available them, she mentioned that the creative industry financing initiative for fashion, whose objective is to provide long term and low cost finance for enterprenuers in the creative industries could be used to boost their businesses after satisfying necessary conditions of having good credit record, bankable project and recoomendation, among others.
