HUMAN CAPITAL IS INTEGRAL TO REFORM - ITF DG.

The Director General of the Industrial Training Fund, Prof Longmas Sambo Wapmuk has said that the human capital is integral to the success of every reform programme of every government. According to him, ‘without Human Capital, nothing will happen'.

He made the assertion while presenting a paper on ‘Federal Government Reform and Human Capital Development in Nigeria: The Impact, challenges and Prospects’ at the University of Jos Management and Business Students’ Week recently.

Stressing the importance of human capital development, The DG, who was represented by Deputy Director and Head, Consultancy Services Division, Mallam Abdul Ganger pointed out that the weaknesses in the American Human Capital development system since the end of the cold war made it possible for countries like Japan, Germany and China to catch up with it in the areas of steel, machine tools and software development among others.

He asserted that it was in reaction to this that former American President Bill Clinton urged K-12 schools to adopt rigorous academic standards in his 1996 state of the Union Address, as a response to the 'economic reversals the United States' economy was experiencing in the highly competitive global economic environment on account of the weakening of the human capital development system.

The DG defined reform as a change for the better. He said that it could also be looked at as a campaign to move form what is bad to what is good. He however cautioned that reforms are not always a move from bad to good, but sometimes lead from bad to worse.

According to him, reform can only succeed if it is driven by accountability, transparency, due process, visionary and committed leadership, due diligence and innovative management. He posited that one of the major shortfalls of the on-going Federal government reform was the absence of mass re-orientation of Nigerians.