Unemployment: FG proposes Youth Development Fund

Ibrahim Abdul’Aziz

The Federal Ministry of Youth Development has drafted a bill for the establishment of Youth Development Fund to tackle the challenges of unemployment in the country.
Its Minister, Mr Boni Haruna, disclosed this on Monday in an interview with newsmen in Yola.

He said: “We have on ground a draft bill for the establishment of Youth Development Fund. This fund is meant to provide for our youths that can access it and develop their skills.”
Haruna noted that there were brilliant youths that needed capital to be self-employed and even employ others that could benefit from the fund.

He said the ministry has a very challenging task of seeing to the development of Nigerian youths who constituted 60 per cent of the population by coordinating all youth development programmes.
“If we can put in place programmes that would take our youths off the streets, we would be doing our nation proud because all the security challenges we are having the co-actors are essentially youths.”

The minister said the NYSC programme would continue to be re-organise to make participants acquire some skills that would help them such fund and be self-reliant.
Re-iterating the federal government’s commitment to providing necessary policies and programmes that would fast-track youth empowerment and employment, Haruna tasked other tiers of government to do their bits, particularly in providing the necessary basic education for their youths.