FG sets up new scheme for unemployed graduates

The Federal Government says it has set up a new scheme, known as Graduate Attachment Programme (GAP), which aims at employing unemployed graduates in the country.

Director-General of the National Directorate of Employment (NDE), Abubakar Nuhu Fikpo, disclosed this on Tuesday in Uyo, Akwa Ibom State capital while monitoring a 5-day entrepreneurship training for the selected graduates.

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He said the directorate has also recruited and deployed a total of 2,572 graduates of tertiary institutions across the country to various corporate organisations.

This is coming a few days after President Muhammadu Buhari unveiled “Nigeria Jubilee Fellows”, a programme designed to create new opportunities for 20,000 fresh graduates annually.

According to a statement by NDE’s spokesman, Edmund Onwuliri, only candidates who have graduated from a tertiary institution and have equally completed the one-year mandatory National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) programme are eligible for the GAP.

GAP, according to NDE, is aimed at providing transient employment opportunities for graduates, enhancing their employability, reducing restiveness among the youths and the rate of long-term unemployment caused by curtailment of employable entrants into the labour market.

He said the scheme, which will run for a period of three months in the first instance, has a six months life span.

He added, ”During the period of attachment, the interns are expected to gain requisite practical work experience and ascertain their indispensability to the organisations they are deployed to, which may lead to a possible retention at the completion of the internship.”

The NDE’s spokesman also quoted Fikpo to have said that the training is designed to provide critical skills needed to enable the participants to identify viable business ideas, package same into bankable feasibility reports that could attract funding.

The NDE boss also assured them that the directorate would put in place, a strong monitoring mechanism in the form of business support services after the training.