The Nigerian Government and World Bank have expressed commitment to build and enhance youth capacity through employment and entrepreneurship, which is geared towards the social economic development of the country.
The Minister of Youth Development, Dr. Jamila Bio-ibrahim said the ministry is ready to facilitate good working relationship with the World Bank that will make a positive impact on Nigerian youths.
The Minister stated this when a delegation of World Bank West African, led by its Practice Manager paid her a courtesy visit in Abuja, the nation’s capital.
Dr Bio-Ibrahim said, ” I really appreciate the bank’s concern for making sure that a crop of citizens, the educated college graduates are well aligned with jobs and well prepared for the job market”.
She went on to say “for me as Minister of Youth Development on behalf of the ministry, I’m ready to facilitate for the World Bank team and the Ministry’s team to further engage so that we do things according to what the bureaucratic processes require.
“When it comes to the skills that we want to pass on, we need to be a bit synergistic and not to duplicate efforts of other industry, to pay more attention to what they are doing, and be able to bridge any gaps that you might have.”
The Minister expressed enthusiasm for the project proposal from the World Bank.
She advocated for the youth well-being department to address mental health and other challenges.
She said the Ministry had interactions with the UNDP fellowship programme who have expressed interest in collaborating with the ministry.
The Minister revealed that the EU has invested over 45 million dollars in the jubilee fellowship programme and that it was an investment that they would like to see tangible results from.
The leader of the delegation of the World Bank, Tekabe Ayalew Belay in his remarks, said their focus is on youth employability and skills engagement.
According to him, their key objectives are to review challenges of youths in emerging market and also look for ways through which the government can address some of these problems among this age population.
“There is a need to boost the skill of Nigerian youth, and the collaboration aims to provide a comprehensive report on youth in Nigeria, with a focus on data-driven insights and collaboration with the ministry.
“I think we also want to see the empowerment of youth rights, their civic participation, their activities, We can even look at the state of the youth in terms of the health status, the mental health, substance abuse, early marriage, all those issues.”
According to him, the major challenge amongst the Nigerian youth is lack of skills, informational and locational mismatch which means they don’t have the right type of information on what kind of skills are valued by the market and lack of job opportunities.
“What we are looking for is solutions that are at scale because in Nigeria, everything is at scale. And given the demographic boom, the size of Nigeria and the growing population, it is important that we begin to think of solutions that can be scalable, but at the same, feasible and institutionally implementable .
“We need to have institutional structures in place so that the government can make credible impacts.
“We really want to focus on digital skills, because that is one of the area that is a key priority for the government and it’s a key priority for the world.”
Speaking further, he noted that the most relevant youth group for them is the college educated and how to use the platform of the National Youth Service Corps program to meet the graduates by coming up with intervention program that makes them more employable and have the skills that are demanded by the market.
“What we want to focus on is sort of exactly imparting them with the right kind of skills, how can the program assist them so that their human capital can be utilized properly in the country because these are the cream of the crop,” he added.
Speaking earlier, the Permanent Secretary to the Ministry of Youth Development, Dr.Umar Ahmed Dunoma, welcomed the World Bank delegation and expressed the readiness of the Ministry to collaborate with world bodies to better Nigeria and Nigerians.
He stated that the ministry is working so hard to ensure it meets its mandate of providing an enabling and empowering environment for Youth development as well as ensuring that National Youth policy is in place for the benefit of the youth.
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