President Goodluck Jonathan yesterday flagged off a N50 billion seed fund for job creation (YouWin) scheme, saying that the programme was designed to tackle youth unemployment in the country.
Jonathan said, at the event in Abuja, that his administration was committed to creating job opportunities for the youth by empowering them to become job providers and not job seekers.
He said the YouWin programme conceived for the purpose aims to create between 80,000 and 110,000 sustainable good jobs over the next four years.
Said the president: “In the course of the campaign for the April 2011 elections, I identified unemployment as one of our biggest challenges that we must address to unlock our vast potential. My concern is, let’s identify those that have potential so that we can empower them.
“This year when we met in Malabo, it was discovered that Africa was one of the continents where youth population is very high. In the United States of America and other continents they have population control measures especially in the area of child bearing, but we discovered that in Africa there are no such control measures.
“And I believe that at that rate we will be able to create jobs faster. And that was why when we created the budget for this year we set aside a N50 billion fund for job creation. Today we have come up with this programme to see how we can help the young people who have the creative ability and turning such creative ability into money.”
He however called on state governors and the National Assembly to collaborate with the federal government in order to expand the programme.
Earlier, the minister of finance, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, stated that the scheme was not all about winning but focuses on empowering those with good business ideas to put them into use, while those without good ideas would undergo training to grow their businesses.
He said the programme was geared towards replicating what has been done in other developed economies.
According to her, “You know that unemployment is a big problem in Nigeria. We thought it was not all about talking but getting things done. It was a challenge for us trying to come up with some ideas; we are trying to do something that’s been done in other parts of the world. We want to empower our youth to start thinking of how to create jobs, not how to get a job.”
“It’s not all about winning in the competition, but it’s about empowering them to move their business forward. The programme is focusing on empowering those with good business ideas to put them into use, while those without good ideas will undergo training to boost their ideas in order to move their business forward. We will link them with banks to source for the capital they need. But more importantly, we will make sure that we monitor this programme vigorously.”
YouWin is a business plan competition aimed at job creation by encouraging and supporting entrepreneurial youth in Nigeria to develop and execute business ideas.
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