Peter Uzoho
The Nigerian Association of Petroleum Explorationists (NAPE) has unveiled plans for an industry-backed academy to tackle the widening disconnect between university education and the practical skills required by Nigeria’s oil and gas industry.
This follows growing concerns over the decline of structured industry training and the gap between classroom learning and workplace readiness.
Speaking at the NAPE Academy Establishment Workshop in Lagos, NAPE President, Mrs Olajumoke Ajayi, said the proposed academy was conceived after concerns that graduates continue to leave universities without the practical exposure employers require, leaving many trapped in the cycle of being asked for experience they have never been given the opportunity to acquire.
Ajayi said the decline of structured industry training opportunities had created a missing bridge between the classroom and the workplace, despite universities continuing to produce geologists, geophysicists, engineers and other professionals.
”Somewhere between the classroom and the workplace, a bridge has disappeared,” she said, recalling a challenge issued to the association to take responsibility for preparing the next generation of professionals.
Chairman of the NAPE Academy Planning Committee, Nedo Osayande, said the academy was designed partly in response to the decline of the intensive graduate training programmes once run by international oil companies, describing it as an industry-wide successor to those initiatives rather than a company-owned programme.
He said the proposed 18-month programme would combine technical instruction, artificial intelligence, data science, leadership training and compulsory industry internships, with courses jointly delivered by academia and experienced industry practitioners.