By Michael Peter, The Sight News
Abuja: The Minister of Youths and Sports Development, Solomon Dalung has stressed the need for a more practical approach in tackling the various challenges faced by the Nigerian youth.
To this end, the Minister disclosed that a plan is underway to formulate a youth development program that would create a youth driven platform to effectively equip the youth to be self reliant and contribute to the overall economic wellbeing of the nation.
“This program we are introducing is distinct from the NPower program. This program we are packaging is youth oriented and youth driven. We want to engage young people in Nigeria and create silos of engagement based on their choice and competencies. Now this is going to be done by young people.
“The silos are going to be managed by young people. Government is only going to provide the supervision and technical competence to guide, also going to engage consultants but the consultants will also be young people. This is the major difference with NPower. Because NPower is a response to a crisis situation; We give you something doing for two years before you are employed. But we are looking to empowering the person who can survive the two years and beyond” he said.
Speaking at an event to mark this year’s African Youth Day, Dalung who stressed that the challenges of the African youth are basically poverty, unemployment and hunger, noted that the best way to tackle these challenges is to adapt methods that are peculiar to the challenges in Africa.
He noted that, “In Nigeria we have a very productive youth segment that needs to be engaged productively. We need to create platforms, that would involve both the private sector and government to develop a sort of multi sectoral approach to youth engagement.
“We must move away from lips service. Lip service is to create a Directorate of Employment yet, it cannot create employment. So we need a more practical approach. You must use different standards based on the capacity and individual competencies to develop them.
Earlier in his remark, the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry, Adesola Olusade pointed out that this year’s African Youth Day, amongst other things seeks to raise awareness on the important roles of the youth in the realisation of a key point of Agenda 2063, which is the inclusion and participation of the youth in every sphere of national development.
He stated further that the “concern of this year’s event is the acceleration of the youth agenda to realize the African Union roadmap that seeks to harness the Demographic Dividend advantage of the continent through the four pillars of: Employment and Entrepreneurship; Education and Skills Development, Health and Wellbeing; and Rights, Governance and Youth Empowerment”.
The African Youth Day Celebration was instituted to promote an increased recognition of youth as main agents for social change and economic growth in all aspect of the African Society. The theme for this year’s event is “Africa’s Youth for the Demographic Dividends: Be the Future Today”.
