A total of 2,156 selected youths in Bauchi state have commenced a three-month skills acquisition training organised by the National Directorate of Employment (NDE).
Speaking during the commencement of the training in Bauchi on Saturday, the Director General of NDE, Silas Agara, said the training would be carried out under the Renewed Hope Employment Initiative of NDE.
This, he said, was the modest short-term effort of NDE at checking the scourge of unemployment in Nigeria.
Represented by the Bauchi state Coordinator of NDE, Mr Jemilu Adamu, Agara explained that the move is part of President Bola Tinubu’s charge to overhaul the Directorate with a view to repositioning it for optimised employment creation.
He said that the trainees would benefit from the 30 skill sets across NDE’s four core programmes of Vocational Skills Development, Small Scale Enterprises, Rural Employment Promotion, and Special Public Works.
According to him, “The current employment initiative has been designed to engage a total of 93,731 unskilled and unemployed persons across Nigeria. Inclusiveness has been a cardinal consideration as we designed this programme.”
He added, “Various categories of the unskilled and unemployed have been provided for within the framework of the programme such as school leavers, school dropouts, women, graduates of tertiary institutions, retirees and persons with special needs among others.”
He stressed that “After the training, a good number of the beneficiaries will be resettled into productive entrepreneurial lives through the provision of tools, equipment, and startup capital.”
“However, those that we are not able to resettle will be linked with credit granting institutions for further support,” said the DG.
Silas Agara further added that 40,000 out of the 93,731 persons enrolled in the programme across the country would be receiving training in ICT and digital skills.
He said this was a deliberate step by the NDE to equip Nigerian youth with emerging skills that would enable them to become globally competitive.
One of the participants who spoke on behalf of others, Isa Garba appreciated the federal government through NDE and promised to pay maximum attention throughout the training.
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