The Federal Government and the Kaduna State Government on Friday signed a Memorandum of Understanding on their plan to train 601 youths cutting across the 23 local government areas of the state over the next three months.
While the Special Adviser to the President on Youth Empowerment, Amb. Obi Adim, signed the document on behalf of the Federal Government, Kaduna State Commissioner for Youths and Sports, Alhaji Bashir Zubairu, signed on behalf of the state government.
According to Adim, the youth would be trained under its office’s Integrated Youth Economic Empowerment Programme.
He said Kaduna was only serving as the pilot state as all states of the federation would still benefit from the scheme.
He added that the programme targeted at young people between the ages of 18 and 35 was designed to help them approach life as entrepreneurs.
Adim said foreign resource persons had already been pencilled down for the training.
He said, ‘‘We have integrated various components of programmes to create a youth development solution.
‘‘For instance, all the people that are going to start up this programme are going to be put into a mentorship platform.
‘‘We partner with different groups in the world. We will be launching the mentorship platform. We are going to use the mentorship platform to monitor the process of the development of our youths that are going to benefit from this programme.’’
He said his office had entered into partnership with the California State University train the beneficiaries.
Zubairu, in his remarks, said the state government would provide revolving fund to the beneficiaries.
He said the state government had so far disbursed N2bn to 7,300 beneficiaries of its newly introduced Youth Empowerment Programme.
He said the beneficiaries were selected from across the 23 local government areas of the state.
