Federal Government in partnership with the World Bank has rolled out new job creation programme aimed at assisting indigent youths in the country as part of measures towards ending poverty, unemployment and check social maladies.
The programme tagged, “Youth Employment and Social Support Operation, (YESSO),” is packaged to provide increased access to employment opportunities for targeted youths through a well structured training programme to be handled and coordinated by the National Directorate for Employment (NDE).
Under the new Nigerian government and the World Bank initiated programme, the NDE is the implementer for the job training skills whereby beneficiaries are expected to be impacted with vocational know-how on different spheres of technical vocations.
Selected youths from poorest of the poor households and wards in seven states of Niger, Kogi, Kwara, Bauchi, Cross River, Ekiti and Oyo, according to a source in Minna, Niger State capital, were carefully chosen for the programme.
The beneficiaries will for nine months undergo intensive life skilled training, vocational/sector specific/technical skills training, entrepreneurship skills acquisition training and internship and apprenticeship training in the first three months of their knowledge acquisition, the source said.
In Niger State alone, 1, 232 youths from different wards across the 25 councils in the state were shortlisted as beneficiaries of the skills for the World Bank and Nigerian government’s job creation initiative.
As prelude to the commencement of the nine months training programme, the NDE office in Minna has organized orientation course in conjunction with a private sector player for the impactation of the expected job creation initiative.
Niger State NDE Coordinator, Abdullahi Baba-Mini, said that the compulsory orientation course scheduled to hold at the U K Bello Arts Theatre, begins in a week’s time for selected beneficiaries from Chanchaga.
Prospective participants from Bida area will commence their orientation programme on Thursday, March 23 at the Bida Town hall, he said, adding that at the end of the training, each of the trainee graduates from the benefiting states would be given starter packs by their respective state governments to start businesses of their own.