NSCC Calls for Integration of Care for Older Persons’ Qualification, Collaborates with NBTE, Skills Nigeria

Kuni Tyessi in Abuja

The National Senior Citizens Centre (NSCC) has mapped out plans towards ensuring that older persons and old persons care skills are included in the Nigerian skills qualification framework.
Already, the centre has opened 40 aging desks in 40 Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs), thereby noting that no ministry or parastatal can handle issues of aging alone, hence the legal frameworks that have been put in place.

Director-General of the Centre, Dr. Emem Omokaro who stated this in Abuja, during the inaugural training programme for Quality Assurance Assessors (QAA) certification in the geriatric social care skills sector in collaboration with the National Board for Technical Education (NBTE) and Skills Nigeria Limited, said Nigeria deserves to have a geriatric social centre industry which is also an opportunity for the country to rule her economy.
She said care of older persons is a skill and to have the skill, one needs to be trained, and for this to happen, the training of 28 providers laid emphasis in stating that it is what the Nigerian skills qualification framework says.

She said, “Issues of older persons and geriatric care should be integrated into the Nigerian skills qualification framework. Without that, there would be no way in what we are doing. Nigeria skills qualification framework defines all that we are doing.”
On the viability of institutionalising old people’s homes in the country, Omokaro said: “Old people’s home is one name we are trying to upgrade. The national policy guidelines are already in place and there’s a minimal benchmark and minimum standard for accrediting care setters. By this, we mean that it can be home care, residential care, nursing or respite care. However, if you go through our docents, you’ll see that they’re separated. What we call the old people’s home is residential care.”

In the same vein, Director in charge of Vocational, Technical and Skills Development and NBTE, Suleiman Yusuf, said the acquiring of skills for care of the aged is a global currency with huge job opportunities within and outside the country.
Lamenting that this is new even though laudable in the history of the country, there are only about 5,000 assessor’s covering more than 18 sectors of geriatric related fields.

“Skills are a global currency of labour. In the training, participants will not be trained under academics, but to be competent. To be this, there must be competency test accreditation.

“As a qualification, it is required globally. Now in Nigeria, we are just starting and we have not more than 5,000 assessors covering more than 18 sectors that we are managing. So we’re grossly inadequate to manage the number that is being expected of us. Even Ethiopia that has half the population of Nigeria has more that 350,000 assessors and they are currently working there. It’s a qualification that enhances mobility and you don’t necessarily have to work in Nigeria,” he added.