Mr Kunle Obayan, Acting Director-General, National Directorate of Employment (NDE) on Thursday, said that no fewer than 720,000 unemployed youths would benefit from the directorate’s agriculture initiative in 2017.
Obayan, who disclosed this while speaking with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abuja, said that the programme would be executed in partnership with the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).
He said that NDE would engage unemployed youths in agriculture by keying them into the CBN initiative to reduce the rate of unemployment in the country.
The acting director-general further said that 1,850 persons would receive agribusiness starter packs from NDE in 2017 adding while 11,100 unemployed would be trained in rural areas in agribusiness.
Obayan said that NDE would also train another set of the unemployed in processing and packaging of bio fortified nutritional foods.
According to him, the training will be in conjunction with Harvest Plus, a non-profit organisation, which specialises in Bio fortification of food for improved nutrition.
Obayan stated that 68 NDE centres would be rehabilitated, while about 18 mobile training workshops and 111 mobile training caravans would be carried out for effective service delivery.
He, however, appealed to the Federal Government to release more funds to the directorate in order to create more employment for the teaming youths and curb crime among youths.
Obayan also said that N 902,800,000.00 had been earmarked for NDE enterprise creation in the 2017 budget, adding that critical areas had been identified and captured in the budget to enhance economic development.
The NDE boss said that registration of the unemployed youths, which could come up in 2016 had also been captured in this year’s budget.
According to him, in spite the ‘’poor budgetary release’’ in 2016 which made the directorate unable to implement some of its critical job creation initiatives, NDE still succeeded in creating employment.(NAN)
BOL/FAT/DUA