Nigeria’s Minister of Labour and Employment, Dr. Chris Ngige has called on Nigerian youths to embrace technical skills in order to wriggle out of joblessness.
He was speaking to Channels Television after President Muhammadu Buhari’s presentation of the 2016 budget at the National Assembly on Tuesday, December 22.
With a promise that the 2016 budget would focus on addressing youth unemployment and cater for the vulnerable, Channels Television sought to know the plans of the Ministry of Labour and Employment on the implementation of this key feature of the 2016 budget.
The Minister said, “What you should expect are jobs and more jobs. If you look at the budget it might not be clear to you what we have done. It’s an intervention budget for job creation.
“There are so many programmes that will run under them but all of them will end up being for job creation – giving employment.
“We will give employment that will be decent. For example, one of the programmes we are going to execute is the conversion of graduates into the teaching cadre. We’ll give them training after Youth Corps, 1-year post Youth Corps, 2-year post Youth Corps, that is the bar and we will start form there; get them into teaching.
“Whether you are an engineer or lawyer, we will convert you and use that as a transition job for the time being.
“We are also going to do skill acquisition. All our skill acquisition centre scattered all over the country are going to be raised into performing their roles.
“Our children should forget about white collar jobs for now. They should use their hands and learn how to lay tiles, make POP, do some carpentry work. These are jobs that are paying even in the western climes.
“Mr President has assured that Nigerians will smile. It’s a reflationary budget that you are seeing now.”
