The Federal Government has said that 47,000 youths have so far applied for the Work Experience Programme (WEP).
The Minister of Youths and Sports Development, Sunday Dare, said this on Wednesday during a virtual courtesy visit meeting with the Connected Development (CODE) management.
The WEP project was one of the series of economy sustainability projects being implemented by the Federal Government to bridge the gap of absences of practical work skills and to cover the unemployment gap in the country.
According to him, the youths applied for WEP through the ministry’s website and some social media platforms.
He said that the ministry developed better tools to reach youths and deliver programmes to them thereby creating a level playing field for all.
“The ministry alone cannot deal with the issues confronting our youths whether it is training, employment, support, entrepreneurship whether it is grants and soft loan so on.
“That is why other stakeholders like the Humanitarian affairs and industry ministries ministry about eight other sectors compliment by working to ensure youths are catered for.
“When we came in, we saw that most of our programmmes are done through analogue, forms are printed and circulated. I found that very limiting because that means if you are not close to Abuja, or somebody in government, you can never get that form,” Dare said.
He added that the ministry got some funding under the Economic Sustainability Plan to improve the digital knowledge of youths.
He said, “As I speak, about 4000 plus will be rounding up this weekend or next that have been trained around the country, we will restart other trainings soon and make sure we get 200,000 of them with requisite skills.”
He added that the first batch of disbursement for the N75bn National Youth Investment Fund had been concluded and hopefully by September the second batch would begin.
He also said that the ministry was planning the first-ever national youth confab that would draw 10 participants from every state, an assemblage of about 370 Nigerian youths.
The minister said that the youths would brainstorm on six thematic areas, which included youths and governance, youth and peace and security, youth and ICT youth in entrepreneurship among others.
Speaking earlier, the Chief Executive CODE, Mr Hamzat Lawal, said that the meeting was organised so the ministry could give status updates on youth programmes and issues, especially the youth development fund.
He said, “This information will also empower us to amplify the work that you are doing and collect more feedback from young people and get more young people to support the initiative that you are leading under the president.”
Lawal asked some questions bothering youths and some gaps identified, like why no member of the NYCN was not part of the National Youth Service Commission (NYSC) scheme board .
He also asked about what the ministry was doing to ensure that Twitter ban was lifted since many youths transact business there .
He suggested a biannual meeting youth town hall meeting, a platform to meet young people, CSOs, stakeholders and the media so the ministry could inform them of their programmes.
