The African Students Education Support Initiative (ASESI) and the National Association of Polytechnic Students (NAPS) have called for the reservation of 50 per cent of vacancies in the ongoing Nigerian National Petroleum Cooperation (NNPC) recruitment for graduates of Petroleum Training Institute (PTI), Effurun, Delta State.

ASESI’s Executive Director, Mr Chinonso Obasi, in a statement on Wednesday in Abuja, said PTI had over the years produced thousands of graduates with high leveled skills in the oil and gas sector.

Obasi said that concerns had been raised that a lot of non-oil agencies found it hard to employ this graduates as they were assumed to be specially trained for the oil and gas sector leaving the graduates of PTI jobless upon graduation.

“In-line with the recent vacancies as advertised by NNPC, ASESI has made a special request that 50 per cent of these vacancies be reserved for the PTI graduates.

“PTI isn’t under Ministry of Education like other conventional tertiary institutions in Nigeria rather it is under the Ministry of Petroleum Resources and so whenever opportunities or vacancies for recruitment are advertised in some of the oil and gas agencies of government, PTI graduates ought to be given high level of consideration for employment.

“Most of the multinational companies in oil and gas sector in Nigeria like Total, ExxonMobil, Chevron, etc, have gone further to operating their own training institutes which put PTI graduates at the risk of not getting employment upon graduation, ordinarily, the government of Nigeria was not supposed to allow that to operate as they already have a training institute,’’ Obasi said.

Obasi urged all the qualified PTI graduates to take advantage of the recent NNPC recruitment by applying.

He appealed to President Muhammadu Buhari, who is also the Minister of Petroleum Resources, to reserve 50 per cent of the vacancies in NNPC for the PTI graduates.

Obasi said a special committee – Coalition of Nigerian students’ Union (CNSU) – had been set up to meet with the management of PTI to discuss further on this subject matter within the next two weeks.

More so, the Chairman of CNSU, Comrade Eneji Mohammmed, who is also the National President of NAPS, in a statement said that CNSU would meet with the management of the PTI before further actions would be taken.

He regretted that the government was not showing interest in absorbing PTI graduates despite the intensive trainings they undergo with a view to contributing meaningfully in Nigeria’s oil and gas sectors.

“We are confident that PTI graduates will be given high consideration especially now that the President and commander in-chief of FRN is equally the Minister of Petroleum Resources,’’ he said. (NAN)