Inuwa Abdulkadir,
Nigeria's youth development minister is a lawyer of several years
of post-call experience. Still in his prime, but his legendary achievements at
such a young age has catapulted him to a high pedestal in the
legal profession so much so that he was picked by his home state to hold
the prestigious public office of Attorney General and commissioner for justice
in Sokoto state for nearly five years up until President Goodluck Jonathan
chose him to become the minister of Youth Development, recently.
Abdulkadir,
a life member of the Nigerian Body of Benchers has settled down into the
national challenge of transforming the youth ministry to be alive to its
onerous responsibilities to the teeming number of Nigerian youths.
He started by highlighting the gianstrides achieved by the younger
population of Nigeria to national development and described the Nigerian youth
as essential building blocks.
speaking at the
Nigerian conversation, Paris Edition, a youth mainstreaming initiative hosted
by commonwealth youth organization which is said to positively engage Nigerians
both at home and abroad, the youth Development minister noted that Nigeria is blessed
with a vibrant and resourceful young population which can contribute
significantly to the developmental aspiration of the country. Abdulkadir
stressed the imperative for all stakeholders in the Nigeria project to harness
the enormous resources latent in the youth who are about 80 million of the
entire 170 million of the country's population.
according to the
minister, no nation with such a huge population will over look the potential it
can bring to bear on its overall development.
The youth Developmental
minister pledged to painstakingly implement the program of transformation as it
relates to the youth policies formulated by the President Jonathan-led federal
administration.
The youth Development
minister had in an interaction I had with him in his office pledged his
readiness to implement the ministry's mandate.
Important aspects of
the mandate are; to facilitate and coordinate the acquisition of market
ready skills by Nigerian youth; to create opportunity for the youth to have a
say in the management of their lives and national development and lastly, to
promote values and social responsibility among the youth.
From my extensive
independent investigation at the youth Development ministry, I came out with
the findings that the Ministry is vigorously implementing the current
government's transformation agendum of youth empowerment program (YEP) which is
a short-term quick-impact intervention to provide skills and entrepreneurial
trainings; job placements; business development services and concessionary
credit to the Nigerian youth.
We in the Nigerian
Human Rights Community are convinced that if the ministry of youth Development
is able to carry through this radical program of youth employment, then a
major and indeed viable platform would have being created for redressing
the unprecedented scale of youth and graduate unemployment in Nigeria. We
believe that human capacity training holds the key to unlocking the solution to
the disturbing social challenge of youth unemployment.
Sources conversant
with the activities of officials of the Nigeria's youth Development ministry
have also told me that the current minister is undertaking radical and
extensive reform measures in the National Youth Service Corp (NYSC) scheme. The
officials are of the considered view that the reform measures being
carried out in the NYSC Scheme is done in view of its low return on
investment to the country as it is the singular most important investment in
youth development in the country today.
In my recent
conversation with the minister, he was of the opinion that he will surely
build a veritable legacy for Nigeria through comprehensive reform of the NYSC
Scheme to meet up with the high standard set for the ministry in the
transformation agenda of President Jonathan.
During the course of
researching for this piece, I ran into a booklet on Nigerian Youth and the
transformation Agenda which was credited to the immediate past Youth
Development minister Mr. Bolaji Abdullahi and was informed by officials of the
ministry who chose to remain anonymous that the current minister is meticulous
in the policy guidelines enumerated in that blueprint.
Going through the
contents, I came across the affirmation by the youth ministry that
implementation of the Youth Development programme has reached an
impressive stage and that in the shortest possible time, the positive
economic impacts would be felt by Nigerians.
According to the
document, the sum of N1.2 billion was appropriated in the 2012 budget for the
Youth employment program (YEP) even as service providers were being recruited
from the private sector to provide training platforms for YEP beneficiaries.
I believe that the
youth Development ministry will achieve a lot more in the area of delivering
skills to the teeming unemployed Nigerian Youth if it can actively partner with
the Industrial Training Fund (ITF) to comprehensively deliver skill acquisition
program for the youth.
One more important
sector that the youth Development ministry can provide positive intervention
and provide better future for the teeming population of Nigerian youth is in
the area of mechanized agriculture.
Document made
available to me shows that before the resumption of office of the new youth
Development minister, the sum of N200 million was made available to the Federal
ministry of Youth Development by the millennium Development Goals (MDG) office
towards enhancing youth capacity in agriculture.
If you ask me, I will
say that not much of positive impacts have been made in this significant
perspective with regard to the monetary release.
The current youth
Development minister should transparently put mechanism effectively in place to
activate this very strategic component of the transformation item to ensure
that millions of unemployed youth in Nigeria are actively assisted to embrace
modern-day agricultural profession because of the salient fact that no
modern nation has ever become developed if it relies on mono-product as we do
in Nigeria whereby crude oil seems to be receiving all the attention as
Nigeria's only source of foreign exchange earner.
Agriculture stands in
a very good position to take Nigeria's economy to the next level but government
through the ministries of Youth Development; Agriculture; Finance and the
office of the Special Presidential Adviser on MDG must partner to implement
wholistic youth agricultural program to recruit our teeming youth into this
sector.
I see hope that with
the support of all genuine and credible youth in Nigeria, the current minister
has the necessary competencies and professional pedigree to bring about radical
transformation.
The hue and cry
lately from some persons against the recent election of the National youth
council of Nigeria is politically-motivated because there are abundance of
evidence to show that those rebelling against the avowed resolve of the youth
minister to bring about change are the same characters maligning the minister
following a recent election in Makurdi, Benue state. I am told that those who
lost out are persons who are clearly no longer within the age bracket of 18/35
years which is the official age for membership of any youth group.
10/6/2013
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