A non-governmental agency known as the Brotherhood All Youths Assembly BAYA, Enterprise Council, has concluded plans to train 2,150 young Nigerians.
The Spokesman of the Brotherhood of the Cross and Star, Edet Archibong told newsmen in Calabar, the capital of Cross River State, south-south Nigeria that the council was prepared to expend nearly 47 million naira on the training over the next five years.
Archibong disclosed that the non-government agency trained 210 youths on business plan writing skills in 2020, which enabled them apply for the Nigerian Government’s loan through Nirsal Microfinance Bank to establish their proposed businesses.
He further said “BAYA Enterprise Council’s plan targets to empower 230 youths with a projective multiplier effect of generating jobs for another 2,150 young people at the cost of N46, 950,000.00 to be spent within the next five years.
“The plan covers programmes in agriculture, education, entertainment, broadcasting and sports. These programmes would be implemented in 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025 respectively with the hope that it will meet, correspond and respond closely to provide lifelines for our youths.”
Changing lives
According to Archibong, the leader of the Brotherhood of the Cross and Star, Olumba Olumba Obu established BAYA with the mandate to develop programmes that would impact lives positively.
He said “this way, the youths will serve as proxies of positive change in all spheres of human endeavours that will manifest in tangible contribution towards the growth of both national and world economy.”
“The establishment of BAYA is laudable particularly as the society is faced with a plethora of challenges such as collapse of religious and moral values, deepening racial division, ethnic conflicts and the alarming rate of drug abuse as well as the frightening level of violence, cultism and immorality” he added.
Archibong remarked that BAYA has also trained 70 youths in organic farming due to the enormous capacity of agriculture to create wealth, stating “these young people were selected from Abia, Akwa Ibom, Bayelsa, Cross River, Delta, Edo, Enugu, Kaduna, Kogi and Rivers States. They were selected for training in areas such as fish hatching and rearing, mushroom, pepper, fluted pumpkin, okro and tomato cropping.
“The trainees were provided with starter packs and made to benefit from the Ease of Commencement of Business package by creating certain preconditions.”
He explained that for 2022, the selection of 175 beneficiaries for the education empowerment programme would be held on Sunday September 19, 2021 at the grand finale of the BAYA convention in Calabar.
The participants
The Vice President of BAYA, Okon Umanah said the agency was bringing together 5,000 youths from all over the country for this year’s convention, noting that the young people would be engaging in state-wide evangelism and making charity donations across the state.
“This year’s convention is a one week programme which would end with the selection of trainees for the next round of our empowerment programmes. We have held our convention since 2013 in different states and this year we chose Cross River.
“Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, we are limiting the number of delegates to 5,000 only and these would be in various local governments engaging in different activities such as evangelism, visitations to traditional institutions, making donations to the less privileged and more,” he stated.
The convention has the theme “Arise and shine, youths of Olumba”.
Nneka Ukachukwu
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