Youth unemployment is one of the woes plaguing contemporary Nigeria. The country’s high rate of joblessness has worsened its poverty crisis and fueled thuggery, robbery, prostitution, banditry and other social vices.
Data from the National Bureau of Statistics, NBS, showed that the unemployment rate in Nigeria has increased to 33.30 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2020 from 27.10 per cent in the second quarter of that same year.
Given the scramble for the few job opportunities available in the country, a person must equip himself with relevant skills in order to become self-reliant and own a business.
It is therefore gratifying that the federal government initiated the N-Power, a cluster of the National Social Investment programme, NSIP, to ensure the presence of a well-trained and highly-skilled youth population in order to have a direct impact on productivity and wealth creation.
In 2016, President Muhammadu Buhari created NSIP where beneficiaries are paid N30,000 monthly for two years. The NSIP is a program supervised by the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development.
The N-Power programme as government’s direct intervention, was categorized under two components- graduate and non-graduate, to tackle youth unemployment by training and providing jobs for young unemployed Nigerians, ages 18-35 across the 774 Local Government Areas.
The graduate scheme has N-Teach, N-Health, and N-Agro categories, while the non-graduate has N-Tech in Hardware, software and N-Knowledge categories respectively.
Since its inception, the N-Power programme enrolled and transitioned beneficiaries in batches A, B and C and in some cases, streams I and II with over 1,000,000 beneficiaries.
In terms of the number of beneficiaries, the Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development, Sadiya Umar-Farouq, described this as the reason why the programme is described as the largest tertiary engagement in West Africa.
She also added that the federal government resolved to engage more unemployed youth into the N-Power programme so as to realize its mandate of lifting 100 million poor and vulnerable Nigerians out of poverty.
“In 2016, through N-Power, the federal government engaged and deployed 200,000 young Nigerians to public primary schools, primary healthcare centres, and agriculture development centres in all the local government areas in the country.
“Furthermore, in 2017, 300,000 Volunteer Corps were enlisted and deployed under the programme, bringing it to a total of 500,000 N-Power volunteers, meeting the programme’s initial goal. This has been the largest post-tertiary engagement of human resources in Africa.
She said, “N-Power is the job creation and economic component of the NSIP for young unemployed Nigerians. It has provided temporary income-generating opportunities for 500,000 unemployed youths of Batches A and B N-Power beneficiaries.
“Currently the ministry is about concluding the enrollment of 1,000,000 Batch C applicants in two streams of 500,000 in the first instance and another 500,000 later.”
On the other hand, the Permanent Secretary of the ministry, Dr Nasir Sani-Gwarzo graduated 7000 trainees in 11 training camps across the six geo-political zones of the country. The beneficiaries are drawn from the Batch C-Stream 2 of the N-Knowledge Programme.
Sani-Gwarzo explained that “N- Knowledge programme is a three month in-camp and six-month apprenticeship training programme that is designed to build competencies and capacity in highly demanding technical and vocational skills in the N-Tech Software and N-Tech Hardware programmes.”
He said in addition, “The federal government also approved N10,000 monthly stipend for the 7,000 beneficiaries of the programme.”
Some facilitators and trainees of the N-Knowledge, in an interview, explained how the programme has brought respite to unemployed youth, as the training will guide participants to become entrepreneurs in the future thereby contributing meaningfully to their respective societies.
A trainee of N-software, Umar Ahmed Sarki, said, “Generally, N-Power is a very empowering programme, we thank the government for the initiative. I registered online in 2019,and in 2022, I was asked to come for my biometric capturing. I resumed in February 2023 when the programme started.”
Sarki added that, “Our facilitators have been teaching us well in the N-Tech department theoretically but there was a delay in the arrival of equipment for the practical sessions until yesterday when the gadgets arrived which have been assembled as I speak to you now.”
The beneficiary concluded by commending their teachers and trainers for their relentless efforts towards impacting their lives.
Another trainee, Abigail Thomas, appreciated government for the program, stating that “N-Power has been impactful to many of us because before now we didn’t have requisite knowledge of a computer, not to even talk of software programming.
“My advice is that N-Power should continue because it can take the youth off the streets and when they have something to do they won’t be used as agents for destroying the society through thuggery and other social vices.
“I also look forward to creating programming software after this training, and to my colleagues after training, they should improve further because ICT is the goldmine of the world.
“I applied online and received a text to come and attend. The training has been awesome, they have been teaching us about Java script, Ajax programming, creating websites and pages, they have taught us theory but they said they will give us laptops to help us practice. This training has really boosted and improved my previous knowledge about computers.
“I haven’t encountered any challenge ever since we started, I stay in the accommodation provided for us and I have also been receiving my weekly feeding allowance of N8400,” she said.
Meanwhile, the Project Manager, N-Software Training, Temitope Folorusho, in his reaction, stated that he always tells his trainees to pay attention to what they are being taught during the software programming as their lives depend on it.
“I expect them to excel better than us in the ICT world,” Folorusho added.
“The ministry gave us a list of over 100 students for the class but only 43 students registered and we are training them currently, we teach them website design and graphics design.
“I am happy with the turn out, we were mobilized to come here on the 31st of December and the students started coming on February 10. These ones that are here are doing well but I don’t know what is keeping the rest but I guessed it is the elections.
“In addition, most of them do not reside in Abuja and this training is for North Central States. We are in week four and the interests of our participants have been encouraging and have been learning script writing,” he said.
Apparently, the N-Power Program, initiated and implemented by the President Buhari-led administration, under the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development will continue to be the largest social empowerment program in Africa, as a result of its large number of beneficiaries.
The program, again, is on course to alleviate poverty among millions of Nigerians, as it is already providing succour to the beneficiaries.
In the long run, it will also be the game-changer in Nigeria’s quest to empower its youth, and permanently address the country’s unemployment conundrum.
