By Brown Chimezie
The Minister of Labour and Productivity (State), Festus Keyamo, has lauded the National Directorate of Employment (NDE) for driving entrepreneurship, innovation and industrialisation in the country.
Speaking at the NDE Special Day at the ongoing Lagos International Trade Fair organised by the Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry on Wednesday in Lagos, the Minister said that the directorate has created millionnaires out of Nigerians and taken them out of the job market thereby reducing unemployment in the country. He said that the directorate has also trained millions of Nigerians over the years, who have gone ahead to establish their own business and have employed others in the process.
Keyamo added that the trainees have created wealth and prosperity in the country, stressing that the activities of the directorate have contributed to the industrialisation of the country. The minister, who is the Supervising Minister for the directorate, asserted that some companies established by former trainees of the agency have become large players in the nation’s economic space and are making impactful contributions to the economy of Nigeria. He then urged young Nigerians to take advantage of the opportunities provided by the directorate to acquire skills and become self-employed and employers of labour.
Also peaking at the event, Malam Abubakar Nuhu Fikpo, the director-general of the directorate, said it has through its intervention programmes and schemes created millions of direct jobs through several windows of opportunities for entrepreneurial training and enterprise promotion, which equipped teeming unemployed persons with critical skills, supports and capacity enhancement leading to successful setup/start-up and management of multi sectoral private enterprises.
He said this was achieved through re-engineered vocational skill development programme.
Keyamo added that NDE has deliberately designed and implemented new schemes that keyed into the micro-economic policies of the Federal Government.
According to him, in August 2022, the directorate started another spectrum of training schemes that has created additional 20,876 new jobs across the nation, adding that the newly the newly created training schemes are demand driven with the capacity to take thousands of jobless youths out of the street.
He said this modest achievement is different from the regular job creation programmes and schemes which had produced 6,923,744) jobs in 2021.