The Nigerian Government has commenced N-skills training for Master Trainers under the National Social Investment Programme.
Minister, Federal Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development, Sadiya Umar Farouq stated that the Programme targeted marginalised and disadvantaged population, including those with primary or no-formal education.
Declaring the training session open, the Minister who was represented by the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry, Mr Bashir Nura Alkali said the 37 Master Trainers would later coordinate the training of 6,475 youths selected from the 36 States and FCT.
“The Ministry worked with experienced training service providers to carefully select those to be trained today as Master Trainers. We expect these Master Trainers to effectively play their role of coordinating the training of the target beneficiaries of the N-Skills programme in their respective States and FCT.
“The success of the programme relies to a large extent on your capacity and commitment to ensure effective delivery of the training, especially in the three important areas of Life Skills, Foundational Skills and Entrepreneurial Skills,” Alkali said.
According to the Permanent Secretary, the programme is principally for youth empowerment which is the major objective of setting up the Ministry.
The Permanent Secretary stated that the N-skills was one of the bouquet of programmes that the Ministry has introduced on youth empowerment.
He said, “As you’ve heard during the address of the honourable Minister. This N-skills first part is supposed to train what we call Master train Craft Trainers, who will go back to the States and now train the other trainers within each of the States in life skills and other skills that will empower the Youths in terms of employment especially now that we are going to start what we call the Smart phone repairs where Youths will be taught all those aspects and then this ones will then go back to train the Youths within each of the 36 states of the Federation and the FCT.
“So that’s basically what we’ve started launching today. And it’s supposed to Cascades to other States in due course”.
While answering questions from journalist on whether the programme is a duplicate of what the last administration did, Alkali said the Ministry has refined and retuned most of its programmes.
“Most of the programmes that came before the creation of the Ministry, we derive from the experience of those other programmes. If you look at what we are doing, we are trying to target principally the Youths. They are about 40percent of the population. Because eventually, these are the people that are now going to take over each and every facet of the country’s life either business, administration and every other part of the country’s businesses so that’s why principally we are targeting the Youths. And once you target the Youths in any of Your programmes, you are really targeting the future. So that’s the difference between what was done before and what we are doing now”.
Earlier, the National Coordinator, NSIP Dr Umar Bindir noted that N-Power targets delivery capacity and capability alongside skills.
He said this was one of the measures being taken to ensure that no one was left behind under the President Muhammadu Buhari Administration of lifting 100 million Nigerians out of poverty by 2032.
He said, “The N-skills targets those young people who are not educated, who are potentially young and skilled and can absorb skills to actually help themselves”.
” This is part of the value chain for technology development. If you have people who are young and uneducated and you want to give them the basic skills, before you say Micheal Jackson these people who are only repairing will also begin to assemble, then from the assembling they will start to make few components before you know, they probably will come together and flag off another Microsoft or another platform that you will be shocked.
“Nigerians are very adventurous, it is just to start and once you start there’s no stopping it.
” This is the final layer to demonstrate Mr President’s zeal to create employment, to create jobs and to make sure that people are earning money and jumping out of poverty”.
Upon completion of the training, the target beneficiaries will be provided with Kits.
Confidence Okwuchi
