Four hundred and ninety-eight Non-Commissioned Officers of the Nigerian military were Tuesday inaugurated into a six months course preparatory for their retirement.

The personnel, comprising 352 from the army, 130 Air Force and 16 navy would spend the next six months at the Nigerian Armed Forces Resettlement Centre (NAFRC) in Oshodi to learn different self-reliant skills.

They would be taught business management skills, fashion design, shoe making, laundry, fine arts, photography, printing, soap making, agriculture, wood work, building and civil engineering works, electrical/electronics, fabrication as well as welding to help them re-integrate into civilian life and provide a source of living for them after retirement.

Admitting the participants Tuesday, NAFRC Commandant, Air Vice Marshal Ajibola Jekennu said the skills acquisition programmes were specifically designed to help build up profitable post-retirement ventures towards self-sustenance and integration into civil society with relative ease.

Continuing, Jekennu said the participants would be trained on entrepreneurship an general management skills, security and safety practice, as well as ICT, to help them build up profitable post-retirement ventures towards self-sustenance and integration into civil society with relative ease.

The centre has been able to achieve its lofty objective. Feedback from the field indicated that quiet a good number of graduates of this noble centre are doing well in their various acquired skills in the larger society.