KEY POINTS
- FG launches National Youth Development Bank to support Nigeria’s youths.
- Skills development, education and entrepreneurship are the focus of the new initiatives.
- Important priorities are Northern development and youth engagement.
The Federal Government has hinted in setting up a National Youth Development Bank and a Youth Data Bank to increase financial and informational support for Nigerian youth.
This was disclosed by President Bola Tinubu represented by Vice President Kashim Shettima on Tuesday in Abuja where he addressed the Stakeholders Roundtable on Northern Youth Development organised by the Sir Ahmadu Bello Memorial Foundation.
Youth for economic transformation
The initiatives are part of a broader youth development strategy that will accelerate Nigeria’s economic transformation, President Tinubu said.
He mentioned existing programs including Three Million Technical Talent (3MTT), the Skill-Up Artisans Programme (SUPA), and Nigeria Education Loan Fund (NELFUND) as strategic approaches to solving challenges in education, skills development and entrepreneurship.
Tinubu also spoke of Nigeria’s creative and digital economy as ‘another goldmine’, describing the National Youth Talent Export Programme (NATEP) and Outsource to Nigeria Initiative (OTNI) as pathways to presenting Nigerian youth globally.
Northern challenges
In addition, the main aim of this book is to discuss the challenges facing the North and address them, and what has and has not been done in previous research to analyze the role of NGOs in the North.
Tinubu also stressed that the development of Northern Nigeria is critical to enabling the country to grow as a whole.
He said ‘whatever disrupts the growth of one region sets back the entire nation’ while lamenting that the country still faces challenges of insecurity, low school enrolment and underinvestment in agriculture and industrialisation.
To restore stability to the North, the President said his administration would further strengthen community policing, rehabilitate displaced persons and fight cross border smuggling and insurgency.
Youth: leaders of today
Tinubu appealed directly to Nigerian youth, saying, “You are not only the future of this nation, you are its present.”
He promised them the government could give them the skills and opportunities they needed to succeed in a competitive world.
Dialogue and education
The Sultan of Sokoto, Sa’ad Abubakar III, said his office would continue engaging and educating the youths.
He also called on leaders to put the strongest legacy on education, saying it was the foundation for any development we envisage.
It is the 15th anniversary of the Sir Ahmadu Bello Memorial Foundation, and a celebration of the late Sardauna of Sokoto’s dream of national unity and development.
