I came as an apprentice. I left with a toolbox.
"I come here as apprentice wey sabi small. I comot with certificate and my own toolbox."
Ifeanyi had spent two years as an apprentice to an electrician in Enugu, which taught him a great deal about pulling cable and almost nothing about why the cable was that size.
He arrived at the Academy able to wire a socket and unable to read a load schedule. Eight weeks is not long, but the shape of it does the work: mornings on sizing, DC theory, protection and safety; afternoons on a roof.
His cohort commissioned four real systems under supervision. He describes the moment an inverter he had wired came up clean as the first time the work felt like engineering rather than labour.
He now works on install crews and is studying for the next certification level. The toolbox that comes with the course is, he insists, not a small thing — it is the difference between waiting for someone to hand you a tool and being the person who has one.