By Remi Adelowo
For decades, one major challenge the central and sub-national governments in Nigeria are battling with is the high rate of unemployment, particularly among the youth.
On an annual basis, hundreds of thousands of youths, who constitute almost 70 percent of Nigeria’s population, are seeking job opportunities, which are either scarce or non-existent.
With job openings in public service so limited, coupled with the decade-long contraction of the nation’s economy, which has stifled its growth and incapacitated the private sector from absorbing unemployed youth, the situation could not have been more dire.
But for the Lagos State government under Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu, this challenge appears surmountable. By deploying novel initiatives across many key sectors, thousands of jobs have been created in the last four years, with the icing on cake being not just providing jobs for the youth, but training them to be job creators in different vocational fields.
The agricultural sector is an area where the Sanwo-Olu-led administration is making a huge impact in job creation. The facts and figures to buttress this claim are impressive.
In under three years, 51,676 youths have been trained in what the government calls agri-preneurship skills, across all Departments/Agencies/Projects/Value Chains under the Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives.
In addition, 34,901 youth beneficiaries have been empowered across all value chains in poultry, meat processing, logistics, in addition to the hundreds of young Lagosians that have been engaged at the Central Food Systems and Logistics Hub, a multi-billion-naira facility currently being built at Ketu-Ereyun.
Add all of these to the six jetties and 15 cottage processing centres built for young farmers under the APPEALS and Lagos CARES projects in collaboration with the World Bank and you see a government that is youth-centric in its job creation programmes and interventions.
In the area of wealth creation, the Sanwo-Olu has acquitted itself quite creditably. Achievements recorded so far speak for itself.
Within three years, over 16,900 youths have graduated from the State’s 20 Skill Acquisition Centres. These youth were trained in countless vocational skills, including shoe making, soap production and fashion designing.
Over 200 youths have also been trained in various soft skills which include CV writing, business planning, content creation and design, make-up skin routine and treatments, and social digital marketing as well as web application.
Young female entrepreneurs are also not left out. So far, 10,000 women of them have undergone training on the ‘Transforming Nigerian Youths’ project in conjunction with the Enterprise Development Centre of the Pan Atlantic University.
Worthy of note, is the state government’s partnership with credible private sector players in addressing youth unemployment. An example is the collaboration with Jobberman and West Africa Vocational Education Academy in the training of 498 youths in Employability Skills and 180 youths in youth employability soft skills, respectively.
What more, the state government facilitated for 636 job seekers to attend the Job Fair Programme organised in partnership with 50 organisations and recruiters at the end of which 100 youths secured employment.
The Sanwo-Olu administration’s Employability Support Project is another game-changing initiative making the desire impact. In just two years, 2,170 young persons have been trained under this scheme, out of which 1,172 are already placed in jobs.
For the current administration in Lagos State, rather than whine over youth unemployment and do nothing, it has instead triggered the creative ingenuity of the governor and its aides to come up with initiatives that would ameliorate the situation in the short, medium to long term.
And so far, it has succeeded to a large extent!
