Akano highlights gains of IT training

Chief executive of Information Technology (IT) institute, New Horizon, Mr. Tim Akano, has said that IT training institutions have done a lot in impacting relevant skills for economic development of the country.

Speaking to newsmen recently in Lagos, New Horizons, he said, has done so much to leapfrog the economy through IT training and empowerment.

“The world is far ahead of Nigeria in IT development and New Horizons is trying to bridge the gap by taking IT training to primary, secondary and tertiary institutions,” he said.

As said by him, at New Horizons, they had decided to take IT training to schools because experience has shown that training achieves quicker results when taken to schools to catch the students at their youthful age.

“The IT big shots of our world today started at tender ages. Bill Gates for instance, commenced Microsoft business at the age o f 13, Apple started at the age of 19, Google Boys started and came into fame at the age of 19. At this age brackets, youths tend to learn faster and achieve greater results,” he declared.

Stressing that for this reason, New Horizons resolved to take its training to young and talented Nigerians that are still in schools.

He pointed out that before the coming of New Horizons, there were pockets of IT training centres, “but when we came on board, we discovered the gap and decided to bridge it through intensive IT training in schools.”

Akano explained that what New Horizons does is to offer the kind of IT training that will challenge people into creativity and design things by themselves.

“When we started IT training in schools, government liked it, especially after seeing the high level of students those schools are graduating every year. Because government liked it, government now wants IT education to be inculcated in the curriculum of tertiary institutions.

New Horizons, he pointed out, started the integration of IT certification based training into the university curricula.

“Four years ago there was nothing like that in our tertiary institutions,” he asserted, highlighting that his school pioneered it by starting with Beacock University three years ago, from where it moved to Covenant University in Otta, and to Lagos State University among other universities in the country.

“We took IT training to both private and government owned universities,” he said.
Nowadays students from those Universities that we partnered can not get their BSc Degrees without getting a certification in IT and graduates from those Universities are now hot cakes in the labour market,” he said.

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