Skills Upgrade for By Automobile Electricians for Maintenance of Modern Vehicle in Jigawa State Nigeria

Abstract

Automobile technicians popularly called roadside mechanics are technical personnels that repairs most of the automobile vehicles in  Nigeria. Majority of these mechanics acquired their skills through apprenticeship training. Modern vehicle imported into the country  posed greater challenges to the present roadside automobile mechanics in the area of carrying out maintenance repairs of these modern  vehicles (autotronic vehicle) due to their inability to acquire autotronic skills competency. Automobile electricians are not  exempted from these challenges. Therefore research is carried out in Jigawa state to ascertain the skills upgrade needed by these  technicians for successful maintenance repair of the autotronic vehicles that are plying on Nigerian roads. The research conducted  revealed that; majority of automobile electricians (15 out of 19) attained educational status above junior secondary school level, 16 out of  19 interviewees cannot repair autotronic vehicles due to lack of skills in the use of OBD and computerized tools. All the 19 automobile  electricians interviewed from 19 different workshops across Jigawa state indicate their readiness to participate in skills upgrade training  on modern automobile vehicle maintenance repairs. This indicates that there is an urgent need to upgrade skills in the maintenance of autotronic vehicles in the State. The skills upgrade training conducted by Federal Government in collaboration with SURE-P, NAC and  SMEDEN was not successful because the educational status of the target population was not considered in drafting the training modules.  The mode of training used does not also take cognizance of the theoretical aspect of the trainees, especially basic science which rendered  the programme ineffective and insufficient for the tasks on ground.