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Nigeria Employers’ Consultative Association (NECA) partnership with Imagine Business Services has launched NECAPreneur scheme, aimed at boosting entrepreneurship in Nigeria.
The scheme is also designed to drive employment among the youths in the country. The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) recently put youth unemployment in the country at over 80 percent.
Olusegun Oshinowo, director-general of NECA, said NECAPreneur was an e-solution targeted at providing an easy-to-access opportunity for the teeming Nigerian youths to upscale their skills and a refreshing change from the chase after white-collar jobs.
The entrepreneurship e-learning programme comes in three stages – Basic, Intermediate and Advance. It is delivered through video tutorial and texts, structured into engaging modules. The curriculum is tested, practical and culturally relevant with the support of the International Labour Organisation (ILO
Speaking in Lagos at the launch of the scheme, Oshinowo said, “The initiative in is tandem with NECA’s mandate to influence economic and socio-labour policies to create an army of gainfully employed youths who in turn would be employers of labour and ultimately add to national development. The target is getting youths to be wealth creators rather than job seekers.”
He lamented a situation where the teeming youth population roam the streets and available as ready tools for social ills.
“The NECAPreneur is particularly designed for youths and undergraduates in Nigeria and the whole idea is to create an environment where we can get our undergraduates to think entrepreneurship before they leave the university, while those who have left and are unable to get a job would be motivated to embrace entrepreneurship as well,” Oshinowo said.
The NECA boss observed, “Nigeria has a population estimated over 185 million, above 50 percent of which is below 30 years, and over 13 percent of this are unemployed”. NECAPreneur, according to him, “therefore, seeks to aggressively develop and make entrepreneurs of Nigerian youths by creating entrepreneurial consciousness among the youths.
“As representative of employers, we have the statistics and the jobs are simply not there, that is the truth. Demand for jobs has by far outstripped the supply for jobs and this is going to continue for a while and we would want to enjoin our youths to take their destinies in their hands by embracing entrepreneurship.”
JOSHUA BASSEY
