President Goodluck Jonathan, on Tuesday, boasted that his government was the first in the history of the country to directly create 4,500 new young entrepreneurs, out of which 2,400 have created nine jobs each.
He was speaking on Tuesday, at the Presidential Villa, Abuja, during the official launch of the Presidential Youth Entrepreneurship Strategy (YES), a broad-based public-private partnership programme designed to redefine the way young people are engaged while their empowerment and employments are supported.
He said the 2,400 new entrepreneurs had so far created a combined total of 22,000 new jobs.
Jonathan recalled that at the inception of his administration, it identified unemployment, especially among our youths, as one of the biggest challenges it was set to tackle and consequently took a number of steps towards that direction.
He said government recognised that the transformation of the economy from an oil-based economy to a non-oil economy presented the greatest opportunities for job creation in our country, and as a result, it embarked on diversifying our economy.
Jonathan added: “Today, I am happy to report to Nigerians that this effort has yielded positive results till date, with the creation of about 1.4 million jobs on average per annum for our youth and we are working hard to improve on this.
“Secondly, given the depth of the unemployment problem, we understood from the onset the need to directly intervene in job creation through a number of carefully designed programmes. As you all know, our labour market is stratified, consisting of youth with different skillset and capacity. So to ensure no group is left out, we designed programs tailored to the various skill-sets.
“We started with the implementation of the Community Services Scheme, under the SURE-P Programme to cater for unskilled youth, and so far, over 120,000 young Nigerians, including 42,000 women and 4,700 physically challenged youth across our country have been engaged in various projects like road maintenance, community security, sanitation and so on.
“Several of these youths are also being trained in various skills so that they can succeed in the labour market.
“In the same spirit, we started the Graduate Internship Scheme, targeting university graduates with one year internship in private sector led enterprises, so that they can acquire requisite skills and experience that can improve their longterm employability.
“Today, I am proud to say that this will be the first government in the history of Nigeria that will directly create 5,400 young entrepreneurs through the YouWin program.”
The president further said that Nagropreneurs programme will also support 750,000 young farmers across the nation, adding that “these programmes have demonstrated that a lot can be achieved through entrepreneurship.”
Jonathan stated that programmes like YouWin and Nagropreneurs were supporting highly skilled youth and budding entrepreneurs, saying “these programs have been designed to ensure that young Nigerians get training, mentoring and more critically access to finance through grants, which had been difficult for them to access in the past, to set up their own companies, which will then employ their fellow youths.”
He said he was excited that YES was being launched, explaining that “the goal of this strategy is to speed up an already fast moving train called entrepreneurship, running across our nation to empower our youths and women. That is why the Federal Government of Nigeria is proud to partner with the Anabel Group to promote and manage the NYENET.COM portal.
“NYENET.COM, an online portal; a one-stop shop to empower and support Nigerian youths. By going to one online portal, NYENET.COM, our young people can access hundreds of federal and state governments empowerment programmes.
