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Federal government on Wednesday said it has concluded arrangements to train a total of 9,400 out of the 9.76 million beneficiaries under the National Social Investment Programmes under the four programmes that have so far been deployed.
Minister of State for Budget and National Planning, Zainab Ahmed stated this while briefing State House Correspondents after the weekly Federal Executive Council presided over by President Muhammadu Buhari at the Presidential Villa.
The policy is coming as a response to severe criticism that government Economic Recovery and Growth Plans (ERGP) lacks focus on human capital development, while only concentrating on capital projects
But the Minister said memo from the Ministry discussed and secured approvals for the empowerment of 2000 beneficiaries who will trained in software development, web development and will be equipped with devices.
The essence of the training is to make them self employable at the end of the training which will be for three months and there will be a apprenticeship attachment after the training.
“Second category, is the supply of 3,000 devices that will be used by staff of the National Cash Transfer office at the national, state, local and Ward levels, to register beneficiaries of the National Cash Transfer programme to able to record their data, Bank Verification Numbers (BVN) and their biometrics information as well as the location of where they are”
The device is expected to assist the to capture information on payments that accrue to the beneficiaries. It will help us to track the performance of the National Cash Transfer programme.
Under the training program, a total of 2900 beneficiaries will also be trained in building, construction and automobile related industries skills.
The training will cover electrical installations, carpentry, genre, wielding and fabrication, plumbing and pipping fitting, paintings and decoration as well as automobile technology, and is expected to be for a period of three months, with apprenticeship attachment.
“At the end of the training they will be given tools related to the trade that ebu trained for, so that they will become self employed”
The Minister 200,000 beneficiaries already that have been deployed as teachers, agriculture extension workers as well as health extension workers. So we are adding to these numbers by moving to the N-Power Knowledge category.
“The fourth category is the N-Power creating. It is meant to teach our youths on how to covert their creative skills into technology to be able to do animation, graphic illustration, script writing and post production activities.
“There will be 1,500 beneficiaries and would be trained for a period of one month and will have two months apprenticeship in a relevant company and agency that has the capacity to train them.
“the end of this training, each of this group of beneficiaries will be going with the devices that will be provided to them. The devices will have uploaded special softwares specific to the skills they have acquired. Our target is that at the end of the day they will be self employed and be able to employ more people.
The Federal Executive Council FEC also approved the purchase of operations vehicles fir the ministry of power works and housing at the cost of N499m
FEC also approved the construction and furnishing of three storey faculty building that comprises academic, departmental offices, conference room, departmental libraries, oilers and external blocks for the National Open University of Nigeria.
They relocated from Lagos to Abuja in March 2016 and only four out of the eight faculties have moved, the approval is to enable others move also.
The new structure would be built by spectrum engineering limited at the cost of N711 million.
Tony Ailemen, Abuja
