Tim Akano, chief executive officer of New Horizon Training Institute, has over 17 years of corporate experience in three multinationals Unilever, Dunlop & NBC. He has vast experience in sales, marketing, corporate planning, supply chain management, public relations and general management. Akano has successfully deepened Nigeria’s IT knowledge with New Horizon. He spoke to emeka okafor.

Century Nigeria Project
New Horizons is coming up with a programme called Century Nigeria. The whole concept of it is to ensure that the current 21st century will count for Nigeria. We did our analysis and realized that the only window of opportunity left for Nigeria in the world today is in the area of Information Technology because when we talk in terms of manufacturing for instance, the Japanese have already perfected in that area in terms of automobile and electronics, they have cornered that market. When you talk in terms of aero plane, America has already cornered it, so the only window of opportunity left for any country is in the area of Information Technology and that is why New Horizons is coming up with a programme called Century Nigeria.  The programme is to reposition this country  to ensure that this century  counts for Nigeria and not  to make  the century pass like other centuries without making Nigeria relevant  in the international system. We can only become relevant through the instrumentality of IT. We want to use IT to reposition Nigeria to make it a relevant part of the comity of nations and the programme is in phases.  The last  IT job fair we did was the first phase of Century Nigeria where we tried to  bring all the youths in Nigeria together to actually  put on their laps the latest trends in IT and how also they can optimize  the opportunities in IT. So that was the first phase of Century Nigeria. The second phase will be launched in a big way from January next year and we are now going to take it out of Lagos to so many state capitals to ensure that not only the youths in the west, but the youths all over Nigeria are empowered, mobilized and energized enough to the level that they will see the opportunities in IT and they will equally optimize these opportunities. Of course in the last one we did, we brought in the president of EC-Council from the United States of America that is part of the Century Nigeria project. We intend to actually bring the best people in IT internationally as of today to ensure that the Nigerian youths see them, touch them and feel them. We let them know that all those things which those IT greats like Bill Gates at age 19 that Nigerian youths can do the same. For us as a company, we know that it becomes easier for the youths when they feel these people, they see them, they hear from them and as well touch these people. Having done that, they now put the message across that for Nigerian youths like the New Horizons slogan would say “Everything is possible”.
IT Job Fair For Youths
Well, the biggest problem facing this country today is that of joblessness. When we did our survey, we realized that that problem is not totally that of unemployment but that of lack of skills to make people to be employable. So the problem with the youths in this country today is not that of unemployment but that of unemployability. The youths are unemployable in the sense that they don’t have the relevant skills that the industry needs today to actually give them jobs. So the purpose of the job fair we are organizing all over the place now is to ensure that we bring the relevant skills to the youths of this country. We let them see where the gaps are and we need to confirm it that all the youths that have the relevant skills have jobs of their dreams within a period of one or two months because all the businesses you see in this country today, there is none of them that will not expand if they get right skill from their staff whereas they can not expand if the people don’t have the right skill. With the right skill companies will expand and the economy will also expand and become more buoyant. So for us as a company, we saw a gap and we are filling that gap to ensure that we situate the problem the way it is – that the problem is not unemployment but unemployability of youths. To solve the problem, we are giving them a training that will make them to be employable and we are not stopping at that, we are also doing it the way it will be affordable for them. Our dream is that before long, all these youths roaming the streets and make you and I insecure will get jobs as a result of training they have undergone. Then, there won’t be any need for you to build a fence before the house. you build a house because the number of people outside the fence  are more than the number of people inside the house. In the face of insecurity there is nothing you can do, you have to first protect yourself. The source of this problem is that nobody is interested in how to take the youths off the streets and as a company, we are so much interested to take the youths off the streets and that is what informed all the job seminars and fairs we are doing so that in the next two to three years, we would have become a country that is driven by IT so that this century will count for Nigeria.
Changing Schools Curricular to Embrace Modern IT Methods
Well, without sounding immodest, after three years of operation in Nigeria, we can beat our chest that New Horizons has added value to Nigerian universities in particular and our economy in general. We have added value in the sense that three years ago, there was nothing like ICT certification curricular in the Nigerian universities, it’s the innovation of New Horizons Nigeria. We saw that gap and realized that teaching students the old IT curricular would not take us anywhere. We have done it for certain years and we did not come up with anything. So that was the gap we saw three years ago. We are grateful for the support we got from the NUC president, Professor Okogie and even the former secretary Professor Okebukola. We are thankful for the support we got from them that we can as at today beat our chest and say that all the undergraduates in Nigerian universities where New Horizons has entered into agreement with are all being taught with latest IT curricular. Let me also tell you that these guys are the ones getting the plum jobs as graduates. For instance, there’s a guy from Covenant University as a youth corper, he is earning over N6,000 per month. Even in New Horizons, we have youth corpers that are earning N120,000  per month. So without sounding immodest, I will say again that New Horizons has added value to people’s lives, parents, students, university system and to this economy by that singular decision to introduce the latest IT curricular certification-based courses to the university academic system. The early birds in this programme are universities like Crawford, Covenant, Babcock, Crescent, University of Ibadan and Lagos State University. We are indeed grateful to the leadership of these universities who saw the trend of IT and who saw that what we were proposing was actually the way forward. Most of the graduates of these universities are the most sought after today in the labour market because most companies are looking for people they will employ and they start work immediately instead of having to train them again for up to three years. Academic training is just the background, they need professional training.
New Horizons Activities in Universities
Well, there is this concept in management which is called low hanging fruit. Low hanging fruit means the fruits which you can first harvest without struggling for a pole to harvest them. So to us, the low hanging fruits in this programme are the states in the west but having harvested the low hanging fruits, the next stage is stand up and go for high hanging fruits, the one we are going to use the pole to harvest, and that is the next phase of our programme. Some universities in the north have written to us and we are going to partner with them from 2009 and also some other universities in the east. By December 2009, we will have covered the entire country.  In terms of capacity, we have the capacity and don’t forget that what we do now is very simple in the sense that it makes it easier for us to get capacity because we train the students when they were in school, so it is not difficult when they come out with the skill to work for us to employ them. What we are doing is to train people and employ them. In October alone, we employed about twenty people.
Pact with LASU
We are starting with LASU this month. After we signed a memorandum of understanding with LASU sometime ago, we needed to do a lot of awareness because LASU is a state university and that is the first state university we are partnering with, so there was the need for us to do a lot of awareness to the stakeholders including students, parents, parents, teachers of the school. So it took us sometime to actually complete this cycle of awareness but before the end of this month, we are going to start with LASU.
 Recent Extension
We are going to be in the east, north and west by next year. The recent expansion was informed by the demand of the market. We have a lot of people who wanted us to be in Festac, so we had to open a centre there. We had the Ibadan expansion in mind as far back as last year but we just implemented it this year. Like we said , we have Century Nigeria project with the goal  to make Nigeria relevant in the world. No nation reckons with a consuming nation but only reckons a productive one and how can we be productive without capacity building. It is when we build capacity that we can have people that can produce IT solutions that the rest of the world will want to use. For me as an individual, I want to see Nigeria as a country in the next five years that when an IT decision is to be taken then will look for Nigeria. With the Century Nigeria campaign, we are bringing a number of best people ion the world to come and meet with our youths to transfer that inspiration and anointing that they have to our youths here.