News Investigators/ President Bola Tinubu has called on Nigerian youths to leverage the skills acquisition programme of the National Space Research and Development Agency (NASRDA) for gainful employment.
Tinubu made the call on Wednesday in Abuja during the opening ceremony of NASRDA skills acquisition project being executed in collaboration with Grassroots Bridge Builders (GBB), a Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO).
Represented by Adewale Adeogun, Chairman, Tinubu National Think Tank (TnT), he said the project was part of the many initiatives of the government under its Renewed Hope Agenda.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the project targets to train 60,000 youths with relevant life changing skills.
“Most of our people are not aware of some of the policies that the President have brought forward because they were not informed, misinformed.
“The NASRDA/GBB project is here to educate, train and allow NGOs, corporate bodies, religious bodies, some support group leaders on these activities and we have millions of people unaware.
“We want Nigerians embrace this programme, come up with ideas of how we can get millions, at least 50 million Nigerians out of this unemployment circle,’’ Tinubu said.
He said the Federal Government was in discussions with companies, government institutions to employ the youths who had benefited from the project.
“These youths, when trained through our platform, we will introduce them to ministries, agencies, parastatals and industries for employment.’’
Director-General of NASRDA, Dr Matthew Adepoju, said that Nigerian youths were intelligent, hardworking and creative, adding that the government was committed to giving them skills for development.
“We can use the space science and technology to empower the youth to function in their own ecosystem,’’ he said.
He recalled the agency already started a pilot skills acquisition programme on mast installation, maintenance and management of telecom infrastructure, with over 60 youths in participation.
According to him, the training is expected to touch on different sectors, states and local government levels because that is where the bulk of our youths reside.
Dr Haruna Mohammed, Technical Adviser to the D-G, said they were at the level of profiling the participants.
‘’The first was the pilot project, which we had over 60 participants, and we are scaling it up now, and we are profiling them, gathering data, trying to know how to spread it across the country.
“For this next stage, we are proposing 5000 youths and we recently had a request from some ministries to train about 60,000 youths,’’ he said.
Mohammed said that the youths would be trained on 27 different skills such as artistry, carpentry and painting.
Mr Ibrahim Igoche, Chief Executive Officer, GBB, encouraged other NGO, partners to join the government in building the skills of Nigerian youths to reduce poverty.
NAN
