Massimo De Luca, head of cooperation at the European Union Delegation to Nigeria and ECOWAS, says the EU will continue supporting Nigeria’s efforts to build a labour market capable of meeting investors’ needs.
De Luca spoke in Abuja on Tuesday during the national skills and industry alignment roundtable Q2 Series on the role of data in job creation, coordination and linkages.
“We have a shortage of skilled labour when it comes to big investment projects,” De Luca said.
“On the other hand, we have a lot of untapped talent that is not adequately recognised. Those are realities that investors take into account.”
He commended the office of the vice-president for leading reforms aimed at strengthening Nigeria’s skills development ecosystem.
Speaking at the event, Yemi Kale, the group chief economist and managing director of Research and Trade Intelligence, African Export Import Bank, said data fragmentation is hindering Nigeria’s productivity, employment opportunities and labour market efficiency.
Kale, a former statistician general of the federation, said Nigeria’s demographic dividend, with 70 percent of its population under 30, presents both an opportunity and a challenge, requiring quality education, economic absorption capacity, and strong institutions.
Kale highlighted the need for a coordinated data architecture to align skills with economic opportunities, enhance productivity, and foster long-term economic competitiveness.
“Across Nigeria today, we have employers that are searching for skill, and at precisely the same time, millions of Nigerians are searching for opportunities they can access,” he said.
“Our educational institutions continue to graduate thousands of young people every year.
“Yet businesses across multiple sectors in the country report persistence shortages in critical technical, vocational, political.
“So, across the country, so employers are searching, workers are searching, training institutions are searching, policy makers are searching, investors are searching.
“The problem, however, is that they are often searching independent rather than collectively, and I think that’s what we’re looking at.”
Rimam Nuhu, special assistant in the office of the vice-president on workforce development, said the national council of skills aims at creating evidence-based policy for skills development in Nigeria to address skills mismatches and shortages.
Nuhu noted that the council would use a new database to identify the gaps and improve workforce planning, enhancing national productivity.
“What this does with this database is that it provides government with evidence-based recommendations, when it comes to policy regarding skills development. Skills development is an input for job creation,” he said.
“Currently, there are a lot of skills mismatches, there are a lot of skills shortages, and what this database will do is that it will give us the intelligence required for us to identify where exactly those shortages are.
“It will help us to plan, do better workforce planning, and then ultimately that contributes to the economy being more productive.
“Some people will tell you that we don’t have a skills shortage, which is quite controversial, but then others will tell you that we have a skills mismatch problem, another problem is that Nigerians, we’re not as productive as we should, right.
“So, this database will help us to be more productive and have better targeted policy making regarding skills development and eventually self-creation.”
Afolabi Imoukhuede, the strategic partnership lead in the office of the vice-president, said the goal of the roundtable is to strengthen existing systems rather than create new policies, ensuring data is used to benefit Nigerians and employers
“Data from various sources, including administrative and labour data, exists in silos, hindering effective policy making,” Imoukhuede added.
“The roundtable, part of a series, emphasises the need to translate data into intelligence to forecast labour market demands and support industrialisation and competitiveness.”
Akubo Adegbe, the senior special assistant to the president on coordination and delivery, said the roundtable was convened to tackle the fragmentation of labour market information across government institutions and the private sector.
Adegbe noted that despite huge volumes of workforce data being generated daily, the lack of coordination often leaves policymakers without a comprehensive understanding of labour market realities.
“If our first Roundtable challenged us to better align skills with industry, this second Roundtable challenges us to better align information with action,” Adegbe said.
The federal government’s plan comes amid persistent unemployment and skills mismatch in Nigeria, where many graduates remain jobless despite employers reporting shortages of qualified workers in critical sectors.
The national skills database will serve as the foundation of the proposed Nigerian skills observatory, an initiative designed to provide real-time labour market data to guide workforce planning, skills development and evidence-based job creation policies.
