The Minister of Industry, Trade and investment, Dr. Okechukwu Enelemah, over the weekend stated that the federal government was committed to tackling unemployment in the country through the Youth Entrepreneurship Support Programme (YES-Programme), which was expected to generate 36,000 jobs for the nation.
He explained that as part of the federal government’s drive and wealth creation programme, which is aimed at addressing the malaise of youth unemployment, the Bank of Industry (BOI) evolved a N10 billion YES programme.
The committee that will screen the YES programme participants and present a road map for it, has been inaugurated by Enelemah.
The minister stated that the programme was targeted at young aspiring entrepreneurs within the age range of 18-35 years, who have a minimum educational qualification of Ordinary National Diploma (OND) or its equivalents.
The minister added that the programme, which comprises eight weeks online and five days in-class entrepreneurship capacity building, is expected to draw 10,000 applications from the target participants, out of which 2,000 would qualify for the training.
Enelemah added: “A total of 1,200 young aspiring entrepreneurs with the highest scores based on the outcome of the evaluation of their performance in the training programme are expected to emerge for funding by BOI subjects to a maximum of N5 million each. The 1,200 businesses that would eventually be created are expected to generate 36,000 jobs.
“I’m elated by the report I received this morning that from March 17, 2016, when the YES-programme online registration portal went live to date, about 40,000 entries had been received which is 300 percent.
“I would to like to assure our youths of the federal government’s absolute commitment to its financial inclusion programme. In doing this, government will endeavour to meet the aspirations of the youths by providing all the support needed by the BOI to successfully implement the YES-Programme. This is in consonance with the federal government inclusive development strategy.”
The new inaugurated members of the committee were the General Manager, Lagos Business School, Dr. Peter Bankole; the Director of Kaduna Business School, Dr. Dahiru Sani; the Regional Head of Small and Medium Scale (SMEs) in the Southern part of the country, Mr. Ibrahim Mohammad, and the Regional Head of SMEs in the North, Umaru Shekaru.
