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The scourge of out-of-school children is real in Nigeria today. Children are found outside the school performing one form of economic activity or another. Some of these out-of-school children, especially the school dropouts, claimed to have acquired some form of skills at some skills acquisition centres. The competency of the products of these programmes is oftentimes in doubt. Most of the time very many of them still remain unemployable and, as such, become nuisance to the society. A multi-stage sampling procedure was used. Four research instruments were used for the study Data generated were analysed using both descriptive and inferential statistics. The findings showed that available programmes were good but the state of facilities available for the implementation of the skills acquisition programmes was found to be inadequate. The competency of the trainees in the relevant skills at the end of the training often did not meet the expected standard of performance. A standard implementation model was designed, validated and recommended for use in the skill acquisition centres.

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Ayotunde Adebayo PhD, has over 25 years experience in training all cadre of company personnel. He has published several articles in business and academic journals. He is a facilitator at Business School Netherlands. Ayotunde also lectures at the University of Lagos.

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