FEC approves new employment programme targetting 60,000 youth

The Federal Executive Council (FEC) has approved a new scheme that is targeted at creating employment for 60,000 Nigerians aged 18-25 years.

This was announced Wednesday by the Minister of Budget and Planning, Udoma Udoma while briefing State House correspondents at the end of the meeting of the council chaired by President Muhammadu Buhari.

Mr Udoma said the new scheme is called the N-Power knowledge multi-track youth empowerment programme.

He said under the scheme, 12,000 unemployed or under-employed graduates aged 18-25 yrs will be trained and given relevant devices afterwards.

He also said the training will be on mobile computing and commonly used electronic devices.

Mr Udoma said the programme, which will be run under the National Social Investment Programme (NSIP), is open to all unemployed graduates.

He also said after the training, each of the initial 12,000 selected and trained “will be empowered to train five other youth, leading to additional 60,000 jobs”

He said the contract for the programme was awarded to Softcome Ltd working with the officials of NSIP.

The minister also said the federal government will spend N259,000 per youth on the training while an additional 207,000 will be spent for work tools.

He put the value of the programme at N5,595,669,250 with a completion period of nine months.