The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Entrepreneurship Development Centre (EDC) in Borno says it has trained 6, 532 youths from the North East on different vocational skills.
Alhaji Abubakar Gusau, the Managing Director of the centre made this known on Tuesday while speaking at a meeting of the Technical Advisory Committee (TAC) of the centre in Maiduguri.
According to him, the training is part of efforts to tackle unemployment and accelerate economic development in the area.
“The EDC North East zone Maiduguri is a CBN initiative which was established in 2013 to cater for the entire sub-region.
“Precisely, it was flagged-off in Maiduguri on Feb. 15, 2013 by the then CBN Governor Alhaji Lamido Sanusi.
“It is a tripartite agreement signed between the CBN, the Borno State Government and the A.I.Development Services Ltd as the implementing agency of the programme.
“The mandate is to train 10,000 participants in the North East within the span of five year period of the programme.’’
He said that the objective was to develop the entrepreneurship spirit among the direct beneficiaries of the programme.
Gusau said that the programme was also aimed at equipping the youth with insights, tools, techniques and framework for functional areas of business enterprise including planning, production, marketing, personnel and finance.
“It is also to develop the skills of direct beneficiaries to successfully start, manage, diversify and expand business enterprises.
“Additionally, it is to link the graduates of the programme to financial institutions and other sources of funds for the start-up capital.
“In line with the forgoing objectives of the EDC programme, the centre in its three and a half years of operations had so far trained 6,532 participants,’’ he said.
Gusau stated that the centre had also certified 4,485 business plans during the period.
“It has also certified 4,485 business plans that can be presented to banks and other financial institutions for loans consideration,” Gusau said.
He said that the centre had also linked some of the beneficiaries to micro finance institutions to access credit facilities for their businesses.
“`The EDC had also successfully linked its graduands to access micro credits for their start-ups; these includes 649 that accessed the CBN Micro, Small and Medium
Enterprise Development Funds (MSMEDF).
“In terms of job creation, 4,136 direct and indirect jobs were created within this period,” Gusau said.
He said that the successes were recorded in spite of the Boko Haram terrorism in the North East. (NAN)