1st October, 2017
By Kazeem Ugbodaga
As the second edition of the ‘Ready. Set. Work.’ (RSW) winds to a close, the Lagos State Government is set to place 1,000 successful final year students in all tertiary institutions in the state who went through the RSW programme on six months internship with multinationals, banks and other companies.
Two thousand students from the Lagos State owned tertiary institutions as well as the University of Lagos are currently participating in the second edition of the programme.
The RSW is an employability and entrepreneurship programme of the Lagos State Government, through the Ministry of Education to equip final year students in state’s tertiary institutions with skills to enable them get jobs when they leave school or be self-employed.
On Saturday at the Lagos State University, LASU, Ojo area of Lagos, Southwest Nigeria an Internship Fair and Business Pitch was organised for the students where employers of labour and entrepreneurs were on ground to interview the students on the skills they have acquired and then decide to take them on internship for a period of six months.
Special Adviser to the Governor on Education, Obafela Bank-Olemoh said the RSW had internship placement for 1,000 students, but noted that others could utilise the skills acquired during the training period to eke out a living for themselves.
He said 70 companies in partnership with the Lagos State Government were on ground to interview the students and to provide graduates of the RSW a six-month internship placement.
Speaking on the essence of the job fair, Bank-Olemoh pointed out that it was aimed at equipping the participants with practical work experience to enable them stand out in line with the core objective of the RSW initiative.
On the impact of the 13-week-long programme which is in its second year, Bank-Olemoh explained that the mind-set, and attitude of the participants were positively influenced to give them an advantage in the job markets.
The special adviser said while some of the interns would be paid by their employers, others engaged by Small and Medium Scale Enterprises, SMEs would be paid by the state government.
He said confidently that none of the graduates being churned out from tertiary institutions in the country were better than those who went through the RSW programme, adding that the government had given the RSW students the opportunities to succeed and that there would be no excuse if they failed to do so.
However, additional 10,000 students in their penultimate year from the same institutions are also being mentored online, through the RSW Academy, while 2,000 of them would be selected to participate fully in the RSW proper next year.