The United State of America is ready to support young business minded Nigerians especially with training and empowerment, Ambassador Ernest Ubong Essien, has said.
The young entrepreneur, who is also the Chief Executive Officer, Magvoile Vocational Centre and Magvoile Foundation, tasked Nigerian youths and leaders on trainings and empowerment that would make the youth self reliant as the panacea to unemployment and insecurity ravaging the country.
Ernest, who recently represented Nigeria at a one-month ’empowering youth through workforce development programme’, a regional project held in the USA, said the US government was interested in empowering African youths with entrepreneurial skills to make them self reliant as a major tool of tackling unemployment and insecurity in the region.
Ernest, who said he and his wife, Margret Essien, have empowered more than 2,000 youths in different vocational areas since the centre was established a few years ago, told reporters in Kaduna on Sunday that their performance qualified him for selection alongside 14 others from African countries.
“I was selected by the US embassy and the US department of state to represent Nigeria on the workforce development of young people. I have learnt a lot. I have been inspired a lot. That experience opened my eyes to look back home and see what we need to do better to address youth unemployment in our country.
“That was what I saw in the US; to create jobs and to protect the youths, and how it is done by creating enabling working environment. Enabling working environment in this context, means running a statistics on the job needed in each state. That is, knowing the need of the people of the state and who can help to meet the identified needs.
“Kaduna state has 23 local government, all the state government need to do is to know what each of the local government is good at, understand this and then get those that can make them do what they do better in unison in tandem with the objective of the state in meeting the identified needs of its people.
“I was amazed at how things are working in the US accordingly. Even for the young people doing summer school, there is a programme for them. They create what is called a skill workforce development for them. So, as they grow up, they are already having and developing ideology on how to key into skilled jobs.
“I have observed that the US government is doing a lot to empower Nigerian youths. Now as an Ambassador, I work with the US embassy in the area of youth development across all states in Nigeria and, that is why I’m ready to work with Governor Nasir el-Rufai, ministry of youth and sportsas well as the office of the Inspector General of Police to address our issues,” he said.
