About 50 Gombe youths have been trained by the National Directorate of Employment, under its Rural Employment Promotion department for Post-Sustainable Agricultural Development.
Speaking during the one-week training, the Director-General of NDE, Abubakar Fikpo, said the purpose of organising the workshop was to equip already trained participants of the Directorate with opportunities.
Represented by the acting State Coordinator Jediel Stephen, Fikpo disclosed that the workshop would enlighten jobless graduates on how to access credit facilities of financial institutions and gain from government initiatives especially on agricultural transformation agenda.
He said, “We selected 50 persons out of the ones we previously had for the workshop all of them are selected from all the 11 Local Government Areas in Gombe State one or two persons from each LGA.
“We will also link them to financial institutions that will give them loan for agricultural purposes in other to get loan and set up their business because some of them have stayed for over two years now waiting for NDE to settle them and from all indication, the NDE cannot carry such burden so we have settled those we can and those who were unable to get loan we organised this type of programme for them.”
While soliciting for collaboration in empowering unemployed youths, Fikpo disclosed that with partnerships, more beneficiaries would benefit from the intervention of the directorate.
He added, “We are calling on other organisations to join hands because unless we teach them something like this before they will be able to get loans to do this type of business. There is money earmarked in the Central Bank of Nigeria for agricultural purposes by the Federal Government.”
Also speaking, an officer of Rural Employment Promotion Nkem Ekeamadi, urged the beneficiaries to utilise the resources made available to them.
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