Youth leader urges Nasarawa youth to embrace skills acquisition programme
- By Super Admin
- Published 08/11/2010
- News
- Unrated
Youth in Nasarawa State have been advised to always patronize and participate in vocational and youth empowerment training programmes to enable them to be self-employed.
State co-ordinator, National Directorate of Employment, Nasarawa State, Mr. Nicodemus gave this advice when answering questions from Nigerian Newsday in his office recently.
The co-ordinator who attributed the low level of commercial activities in the state to over dependency on government and white-collar jobs, advised the people of the state to get involved in self-employed commercial activities in order to balance between government and privately owned businesses in the state.
Speaking on the functions of the National Directorate of Employment, Mr. Nicodemus said the main purpose of the existence of NDE is to assist the unemployed and poverty-stricken citizens of Nigeria not by giving them paid employment but by making them self-employed under various training schemes such as Graduate Attachment Programme (GAP), Start Your-Own Business (SYOB) designed for mature people and retirees on how to be self-employed.
Other programmes under the NDE include agricultural schemes such as rural employment promotion which trains people on agricultural skills and provision of soft loans for such people to have effective agricultural practices.
“Training on electronic and handset repairs, soap making and cosmetics, hair dressing and barbing saloon, welding and so on, are also carried out by NDE with the provision of equipment for starting up”, he said adding that over 1,000 people have so far benefited from the various training schemes between last year and this year.
Mr. Nicodemus further said that the state government needs to be part and parcel of the directorate so as to reduce some of the intricacies of job opportunity as well as effective service delivery.
He lamented that the directorate has been trying to create linkages with the state government and has written a number of proposals which have not been given priority up to date.
While commending the federal government for its giant strides towards alleviating poverty in the state, he urges youths to utilize the scheme to empower themselves and shun idleness as it is the devil’s workshop.
State co-ordinator, National Directorate of Employment, Nasarawa State, Mr. Nicodemus gave this advice when answering questions from Nigerian Newsday in his office recently.
The co-ordinator who attributed the low level of commercial activities in the state to over dependency on government and white-collar jobs, advised the people of the state to get involved in self-employed commercial activities in order to balance between government and privately owned businesses in the state.
Speaking on the functions of the National Directorate of Employment, Mr. Nicodemus said the main purpose of the existence of NDE is to assist the unemployed and poverty-stricken citizens of Nigeria not by giving them paid employment but by making them self-employed under various training schemes such as Graduate Attachment Programme (GAP), Start Your-Own Business (SYOB) designed for mature people and retirees on how to be self-employed.
Other programmes under the NDE include agricultural schemes such as rural employment promotion which trains people on agricultural skills and provision of soft loans for such people to have effective agricultural practices.
“Training on electronic and handset repairs, soap making and cosmetics, hair dressing and barbing saloon, welding and so on, are also carried out by NDE with the provision of equipment for starting up”, he said adding that over 1,000 people have so far benefited from the various training schemes between last year and this year.
Mr. Nicodemus further said that the state government needs to be part and parcel of the directorate so as to reduce some of the intricacies of job opportunity as well as effective service delivery.
He lamented that the directorate has been trying to create linkages with the state government and has written a number of proposals which have not been given priority up to date.
While commending the federal government for its giant strides towards alleviating poverty in the state, he urges youths to utilize the scheme to empower themselves and shun idleness as it is the devil’s workshop.
