16 hours ago
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The Minister of Youth Development, Comrade Ayodele Olawande, has urged various stakeholders in youth development to complement their positive engagements to create meaningful environment “so that young people of this country can thrive.”
The minister made the appeal when he received the team of World Bank officials led by their team leader, Masheshwor Shrestha, in his office, Abuja Thursday.
A press release by the director of press and public relations of the Ministry, Omorala Esan, quoted the minister as saying “when you are engage positively, you have a feeling that the government exists and what the president is doing.”
According to the minister, since the inception in 2007, the Ministry has been saddled with the development of more than half of the country’s population.
He said the current reality showed that 60 million youths were in the labour market and that additional 5.5 million youths “join the labour market every year.”
“Almost 58 per cent of informal work force is young people while the majority of these informal youths are found in rural areas and semi-urban areas being vulnerable and at risk,” he said.
Olawande expressed dissatisfaction in the deficiency of skills for job market, relevant vocational training, and the lack of access to capital and funds safety, infrastructure deficit.
He, therefore, implored various stakeholders to build on the existing collaboration with the World Bank to address “all these challenges to better the lives of Nigerian youths.”
“Since we assumed office, our focus has been to achieve a strong coordinated mechanism for all youth interventions, focus on economic inclusion, provide jobs directly and indirectly for at least 10 million youth within the next five years, ensuring that youth is proficient in at least two income generating skills, expand our credit support funds by 50 million dollars to reach young people businesses and to increase Nigeria’s youth-focused infrastructure,” he said.
In his remarks, Shrestha disclosed that the organisation was ready to engage Nigerian youths on three pathways, adding that the “first of these three pillars of engagement is to give them the skills and match them to a job that they are suited for.”
“The second is to facilitate, manage migration opportunities which would probably not give the jobs to everybody but it will relieve the stress on the economy, particularly, when there are no enough domestic jobs.”
