Uche Usim, Abuja
To reduce poverty and stem rising crimes in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), the Abuja Enterprise Agency (AEA) has embarked on aggressive youth empowerment programmes cutting across a broad spectrum of the economy.
To this end, the agency recently graduated 28 trainees on carpentry skills, cabinetry and furniture making.
The training and empowerment of the number is in addition to 2,216 young men and women from all the six area councils in the FCT that have benefited from the scheme.
Speaking at the graduation of the latest trainees in carpentry, the Minister of the FCT, Mr Muhammad Musa Bello reiterated the need to mitigate poverty through widening the scope of sustainable economic activities especially among youth in the nation’s capital city.
Bello particularly assured that the
FCT administration will continue to implement policies and programmes that will improve employment through training and empowerment of youth and women, thereby exposing them to multiple streams of income in the territory.
Bello, who was represented at the event by FCT Education Secretary, Dr. Mohammed Bala Liman, said the administration had strongly sustained the training and empowerment of the youth in its relentless effort to reduce unemployment in the FCT.
He said: “Although the issue of poverty is complex, as it is multi-dimensional, but AEA is trying to ensure that those youth that do not have jobs get something to do.
“And once they set up their businesses, they will begin to employ more people, and fewer people will be on the unemployment scale, that means poverty will be gradually reduced.
“Tackling poverty is such a huge and herculean task, and it’s not something that the FCTA can do in one or two years. It is a process whereby you put down policies and programmes, to ensure that in the long term poverty is drastically reduced.
“That’s why AEA as the flagship of the FCT Administration has always been receiving total support from the FCTA in trying to develop the youth in FCT.”
Earlier in his address, the Managing Director AEA, Mr Arabi Muhammed Tukur called on all stakeholders in Micro Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) sub-sector to join hands with the Agency to nurture and grow entrepreneurs as the agency alone cannot successfully deliver on its mandate without inputs from them.
He expressed hope that the new carpentry trainees, will in due course, create new enterprises, jobs and generate wealth in the FCT.
“I therefore, urge all relevant Stakeholders here and in the outer spheres to join hands with the Abuja Enterprise Agency in supporting the graduating Trainees who successfully completed this program today and indeed many more that the agency is prepared to turn out.
“This administration has fully sponsored all the trainings that the Agency conducted in 2018 which cut across various skills. The result of this tremendous support is the training and empowerment of 2,216 young men and women from all the six Area Councils in the FCT”, he stated.
One of trainees, Agbo Godwin Ochigbo, a graduate of Political Science from Benue State University thanked the AEA management, Dazzle Carpentry Limited and the FCT Administration for the opportunity to learn.
“I discovered that the training opened up my mind to think creatively. Aside from being a graduate, who was looking for a white-collar job, learning this skill has given me an option to help myself and think of what I can do creatively. With the skill I have learnt, I can start-up a business and start earning some money for myself,” Ochigbo said.