Job creation: NDE gives 2,572 graduates employability opportunity

In furtherance of its crusade against the high rate of unemployment in Nigeria, the National Directorate of Employment (NDE), has recruited and deployed 2,572 unemployed graduates of tertiary institutions across the country to different corporate organisations under its transient job creation scheme.

The Directorate of Employment, further explained that the scheme is known as Graduate Attachment Programme (GAP), and designed to 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.

According to a press release by NDEs Deputy Director Press, Edmund Onwuliri, The scheme will run between three months to six months.

It also said that eligibility for GAP requires that each candidate must have graduated from a tertiary institution and equally must have completed the mandatory one year National Your Service Programme. It also stated that 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 possible retention at the completion of the internship.

Similarly, the NDE recently concluded a five-day entrepreneurship skills training for graduates of tertiary institutions across the country.

The training, according to the Directorates statement, engaged 50 graduates from each of the 36 states of the federation and the FCT. The training was organised under the Small Scale Enterprises programme of the Directorate tagged Start Your Own Bussiness (SYOB).

Addressing newsmen while monitoring the SYOB training in Uyo, Akwa Ibom State, the Director-General of the NDE, Mallam Abubakar Nuhu Fikpo, said the training was designed to provide critical skills needed to enable the participants to identify viable business ideas and package same into bankable feasibility reports that could attract funding.

According to him, the bottom line is to make the participants eventual entrepreneurs, job creators and not job seekers.

The DG further encouraged participants of the training to make good use of the opportunity given to them by the Federal Government through the NDE. He went on to enjoin them to bring the knowledge acquired from the training to bear on the various businesses they would run. Mallam Fikpo also assured them that the NDE would put in place a strong monitoring mechanism in the form of business support services after the training.

Some of the participants expressed gratitude to the Director-General for providing them with the opportunity to be trained on how best to start and run viable businesses of their choice.

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