The minister of youth and sports development, Mr Sunday Dare, has reiterated federal government commitment to development-focused initiatives that would harness the potentials of the youth and as well upscale them towards achieving rapid socio-economic growth in the country.
He disclosed this during the commemoration of the 2021 Africa Youth Day held on Monday in Abuja- with the theme ”Defining the Future Today: Youth – Led Solutions for Building The Africa We Want”.
Dare explained that the federal government in realisation of the demographic dividends of the Nigerian Youth as a strategic asset, has pledged to continue to support their efforts with youth development focused-initiatives that will create innovative solutions and boost their entrepreneurial capacity.
This administration is committed to youth development and has established youth development – focused initiatives, while scaling up on existing ones , such as the recently approved increase of N-Power beneficiaries from 500,000 to One Million; the N75 billion National Youth Investment Fund ( NYIF); the Central Bank of Nigeria’s Creative Sector Fund and others being carried out in collaboration with international partners,” Dare said.
To complement the efforts of the federal government in investment in the Nigerian youth, the Minister said that the Ministry has initiated deliberate policies and programmes that will enhance the capacity of the youth as it recognizes the youth as key agents for socio-economic growth and sustainable development.
The Ministry is focused on providing opportunities for our youth in Training , Digital Skills, Entrepreneurship, soft skills, internships and access to credit and finance among others.
The DEEL programme helps to fill the knowledge and skills gap in the Nigerian youth.
Our DEEL initiative focuses on Digital Literacy and Skills Acquisition, Entrepreneurship, Employability and Leadership.
We focus more on training into enterprise and, in the past 2 years, we have trained close to 198,000 youth.”
