Three hundred Bauchi youths will benefit from Federal Government’s N-Skills Phone Repair training under its National Social Investment Programme (NSIP).
At the kick-off of the training at the Asa Abubakar Centre in Bauchi, the state capital, Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management, and Social Development Sadiya Umar Farouq said the move was part of the Federal Government’s efforts at reducing poverty and unemployment in the country.
She said the beneficiaries would be provided with starter packs and deployed to Master Craft Persons for a six-month apprenticeship.
The minister said the N-Power programme in Bauchi State has increased from 12,878 deployed under Batches A and B to 16,820 under Batch C, adding that over N6.2 billion would be spent for the training, tooling, and/or payment of monthly stipends.
She said: “The smartphone repairs is used to pilot the N-Skills programme, which is part of the N-Power non-graduate programmes. It is consistent with the national aspiration of lifting 100 million Nigerians out of poverty in 10 years.
“The programme is designed to train; tool and transit unemployed youths into the labour market for gainful employment. The ministry is working with carefully selected consulting firms to provide the N-Skills training services for 6,475 unemployed youths.
“The six-week training is designed to equip target beneficiaries with life, vocational and entrepreneurship skills preparatory to the work-based learning during the six-month apprenticeship.”
Farouq hoped the programme would create wealth for youths of Bauchi State.
On the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) project, which is part of the N-Power Junior programme, she said the Federal Government would set up STEM centres in 12 federal and state schools in Bauchi State.
The minister inspected the STEM projects at Federal Government Girls’ College, Abubakar Tatari Ali Polytechnic, and Special School in Bauchi.
