BY CALEB AYANSINA
Not less than 267 youth entrepreneurs engaged in agriculture drawn from various states have been trained by the Federal Government to consolidate on the YouWin entrepreneurial empowerment scheme which remains one of the high points of the present administration efforts at reducing unemployment rate among the youths.
Vanguard gathered that 80 beneficiaries were trained in Ode-Omu centre in Osun state, 90 youths in Sapele, Delta State, while 97 people benefited from the programme at Katsina center in Katisina state.
During the closing ceremony of the intensive empowerment training programme held at the various centres, the Minister of Youth Development, Inuwa Abdul-kadir said that the objective was to ‘build up capacity for self-sustained livelihoods in youth through training and thereafter empower them to start their own business and thus become employers of labour’.
The Minister in a statement signed by the Assistant Director (Press and Public Relations) of the ministry, Mr Olusola Abiola disclosed that “empowering the youths in developing economic and leadership skills is a fulfillment of the promise made by President Goodluck Jonathan under the transformation agenda to ensure youths get the necessary empowerment which would transform their lives and help them become contributors to national development”.
He explained that “the programme is a deliberate policy to complement the Ministry’s existing National Youth Agricultural/Vocational Skills Acquisition and Capacity Building Programme under this administration conceived to give meaning to the lives of both under-employed and uneducated youths, in order to encourage their involvement in Agriculture”.
Abdul-kadir charged participants to use their acquired skills to impact the society, expressing the desire of the Federal Government to see their skills giving employment to others in their communities, thereby helping to create job opportunities and create wealth.
This he said will actualize Mr. President’s dream to drastically reduce poverty can be drastically within few years, if commitment and consistency can be sustained.
The minister equally used the opportunity to disclose that the Ministry was working on other interventions directed at addressing youth restiveness caused by misery and joblessness such as the Youth Employment Programme, adding that, under the 2013 appropriation Government will aggressively pursue the implementation of these programmes which will effectively deliver thousands of jobs annually to the nation’s economy.
