Jonathan targets 110,000 jobs in four years

L-R: Vice President Namadi Sambo; Bolaji Abdullahi, minister of youth development; Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, minister of finance, and President Goodluck Jonathan, launching the job creation programme in Abuja, yesterday. NAN

The Federal Government has started the implementation of its job creation agenda, with the launch of a new employment generation scheme which targets to create between 80,000 to 110,000 sustainable jobs over the next four years.

Unveiling the ‘Youth Enterprise with Innovation in Nigeria’ initiative, tagged “You Win” scheme yesterday at the Presidential Villa in Abuja, President Jonathan acknowledged that unemployment is one of the huge challenges facing the country, promising to tackle the scourge frontally.

The “YouWin” scheme, is an innovative business plan competition that harnesses the creative energies of young people between the ages of 18 and 35. The programme is largely targeted at owners of existing formal and informal businesses, who will be asked to submit their business plans for a competition. These will be evaluated by a panel of experts and the best submissions from each geopolitical zone will be selected for support.

“In fulfilment of my electoral promises, the Youth Enterprise with Innovation in Nigeria initiative, also known as ‘YouWin’, is one of the first programmes to be funded, in part, from the N50 billion job creation fund, set aside in the 2011 budget. ‘YouWin’ is a demonstration of this administration’s goal of developing a robust private sector, by encouraging locally-owned enterprises,” the President told the gathering.

He further explained that the new scheme is an innovative business plan competition that harnesses the creative energies of young people between the ages of 18 and 35. The programme is largely targeted at owners of existing formal and informal businesses who will be asked to submit their business plans for a competition. These will be evaluated by a panel of experts and the best submissions from each geopolitical zone will be selected for support.

Under the programme being implemented by the Federal Government, the development partners and the private sector, the identified youth will be trained at the Entrepreneur Development Centre of the Pan African University.

The job creation programme will then provide support for these winners to either expand their existing businesses to create jobs for the youth in their locality, or start-up businesses that create jobs based on their ideas.

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