Youth empowerment, entrepreneurship and creating business incubation hubs and skills acquisition centers for Nigerian teeming youth have been identified as keys in igniting a social change and spur economic development in Nigeria.
This was discussed during a one-day round table discussion held in Gombe yesterday by a group campaigning for the All Progressives Congress (APC) presidential candidate, Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
A lecturer from Kaduna State University, Suwaiba Shehu Ibrahim, said: “Another premise of the renewed hope is also creating business incubation hubs and skills acquisition centers. There is no way we are going forward if our youth don’t have skills to make them employable or to make them self-employed. Skills are the way to go, it is not about the paper qualification.
“Yes, it is good to go to school and have degrees but can your degrees solve the problems in society? So we are trying to see that we want to have youth that are employable who can look at the problems we are having in the society and use their knowledge and skills to solve those problems. We don’t have to wait for others to come from outside and solve our problems or manufacture things for us or the gadgets that we need.
“Once we have a lot of SMEs the economy will start being boosted and a lot of jobs will be created. Then our students who are graduating don’t have to go looking for white collar jobs.”
