By Fatima Saka
The National Economic Council in media engagement with the core working group on Human Capital Development has advocated the need to create awareness about the health and nutrition, Education and labour Force participation of Nigerians.
At the critical launch meeting held in Abuja, the Council enjoined government, stakeholders and media engagement to accelerate Human Capital Development (HCD).
The Coordinator of the Core Working Group, Mrs Yosola Akinbi said that the government and stakeholders have a key role to play by looking at the basics needs of the communities where the vulnerable groups are not in school, adding that the traditional leaders must always speak out about the basics health amenities in their communities.
” It is important to NEC that the states are committed to the need to have a national vision that everybody will adhere to: by working with the state and local government to ensure that individuals must push towards HCD.
“We have said to ourselves one of the critical and most important things in terms of human capital development is the education of the HCD culture.
“Also we have recognized other things that we need to work on to move forward in terms of development. And we said that actually this sits across different levels and multi stakeholder and we recognize you the press in there as really very important.
“We also recognize that the states are very important so that’s why we are working with all of them to see how we can accelerate human capital development,” she stated.
While speaking, Mr Asishana Okauru, Director General of the Nigerian Governors’ Forum, who was represented by Bello Barkindo expressed that, the government officials working on the program of HCD in combination of health, knowledge, and skills, have shown competency of human towards development of the society.
He further stated that HCD of NEC, is designed to address poor human development premises across the country, under child mortality, adult survival, particularly in modern quality of learning.
Also, Dr Nadeem Hasan, Head of Human Development Demography, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) in Nigeria said HCD is the best perspective in empowering girl child and putting an end to security challenges across the country, adding that by so doing, it can also address high rate of mortality which is capable of preventing and scale up the reduction of harmful practices.
The critical meeting attracted the stakeholders, media practitioners, representatives from the World Bank, Nigeria’s Governors Forum, Nigeria’s Ministries of Health, Labour and employment and UNICEF among others.