Sola Ojo, Kaduna
In its efforts to ensure financial inclusiveness at rural areas, Kaduna State Government has trained 50 youths including people living with disabilities on basic rural banking.
The trainees, who have undergone three days extensive learning, were carefully selected from the 23 local government areas of Kaduna State and trained so they could provide basic banking services at community level even where no bank exist.
Fielding questions from newsmen, Commissioner, Ministry of Women Affairs and Social Development, Hajiya Hafsat Baba said the 3-day training which ended, on Wednesday, was designed to give gender responsiveness skill to young women and men as well as to empower the youths as financial services hubs through partnerships with Central Bank of Nigeria.
She said her ministry felt the intervention should also be felt at the local government level as strategy to better connect women and ensure that gender are understood and mainstreamed into all government, private and community affairs.
“The selection, which include one young boy and a lady from each of the 23 local government area of the state which makes it 2 persons from each of the 23 local government totalling 46 and with additional four persons with disabilities to make it 50 people.
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“We really want to have people who have little knowledge, passion and they can make an impact in contributing to their communities because we want it to be community driven.
“At the end of the training which is ending today, the youth would be provided with gender tool kits to enable them understand what the training is all about and apply it to improve financial inclusion of their immediate communities.
“We use that opportunity to train our youths on agency banking. Like I said, at the end of the training, the agency banking would provide opportunity for these young persons to have a job at their locality.
“There is monetary mechanism put in place to enable the ministry trained another eight supervisors that would be supervising the youths so that by November 2018, we will able to showcase success story about this young people”, she hoped.
She said further that the training was part of the five goal of Sustainable Development Goal (SDGs), “last year, there was a presentation at the United Nations by the deputy governor who led the state delegations been the only state that presented the local SDGs.”
One of the Consultants, Aminu Busy, appreciated the state government for organizing the training for the youth in Kaduna saying, the training would provide a powerful empowerment which was in line with central bank agency banking policy.
“Like in Kudan and Kauru where there are no banks. So, these participants will serve as bank agents where they can open an account where people can withdraw money from them and also deposit or pay bills”, he added.
