The National Directorate of Employment (NDE) has recruited and deployed 2,572 unemployed graduates of tertiary institutions across the country to various corporate organisations under its transient job creation scheme.
The scheme, known as Graduate Attachment Programme (GAP) is aimed at providing transient employment opportunities for graduates, enhancing their employability, reducing restiveness among the youths and the rate of long-term unemployment caused by curtailment of employable entrants into the labour market.
The scheme which will run for a period of three months in the first instance has a six months life span, while to be eligible, each candidate must have graduated from a tertiary institution and also completed the mandatory one year National Your Service Programme.
During the period of attachment, the interns are expected to gain requisite practical work experience and ascertain their indispensability to the organisations they are deployed to which may lead to possible retention at the completion of the internship.
Also, in line with her statutory mandate, the NDE recently concluded a 5-day entrepreneurship skills training for graduates of tertiary institutions across the country. The training which engaged fifty graduates from each of the 36 states of the federation and the FCT, was organised under the Small Scale Enterprises programme of the Directorate tagged “Start Your Own Bussiness (SYOB).”
Speaking while monitoring the SYOB training in Uyo, Akwa Ibom State, the Director-General of the NDE, Mallam Abubakar Nuhu Fikpo, said the training is designed to provide critical skills needed to enable the participants to identify viable business ideas, package same into bankable feasibility reports that could attract funding.
While advising the participants to make good use of the opportunity given to them by the federal government through the NDE, he said the bottom line is to make the participant’s eventual entrepreneurs, job creators and not job seekers.
He further charged them to bring the knowledge acquired from the training to bear on the various businesses they will run and assured them that the NDE will put in place a strong monitoring mechanism in the form of business support services after the training.
Some of the participants expressed gratitude to the Director-General for providing them with the opportunity to be trained on how best to start and run viable businesses of their choice. While in Uyo, Mallam Fikpo was honoured with the “He For She” special award at the 21st regular national council meeting on women affairs which was held in Uyo between Sunday 22 through Friday 27 August 2021.
According to the Minister of Women Affairs, Dame Pauline Tallen, Mallam Fikpo is being honoured for his commitment to the upliftment of women in skills acquisition, entrepreneurship development and other income-generating activities for women nationwide.
Nigerian Tribune
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