[size=14pt]Self employment bug waxes strong as YouWiN! debuts[/size] .
Monday, 24 October 2011 00:00 Siaka Momoh

It has to be. If not, we may be heading for disaster. The subject of unemployment and the need to endorse the option of self-employment as solution is one that has been close to the heart of this writer for a long time.

In Nigeria, every year, over 166, 000 graduates are churned out of our tertiary institutions. These fresh graduates are meant to be absorbed by the employment market. But this is impossible because we do not create 166,000 jobs yearly. So, the natural and best option is creation of new jobs by the self-employed.

It was therefore soothing news when Ruqayyatu Ahmed-Rufai, education minister, sometime ago, urged fresh graduates not to depend on white-collar jobs after leaving school, saying government alone could not meet the challenges of unemployment in the country. Ahmed-Rufai, who gave the advice at the 31st convocation ceremony of the Adeyemi College of Education, Ondo, said few vacancies that exist in the civil service could not meet the demands of thousands of fresh graduates searching for gainful employment.

She, therefore, charged them to embrace entrepreneurial skills and develop initiatives for self-employment generation, noting that no nation can develop without adequately investing in human capital development.

Ahmed-Rufai’s call looks like a precursor to the Federal Government’s new job creation project, Youth Enterprise with Innovation in Nigeria (YouWiN), flagged off few days ago in Abuja.

Flagging off the project, President Goodluck Jonathan said “it is designed to tackle youth unemployment in the country. YouWiN! is a project of the Federal Government of Nigeria… supporting innovative business ideas.”

Jonathan said his administration was committed to creating job opportunities for the youth by empowering them to become job providers and not job seekers, saying the YouWin programme conceived for the purpose aims to create between 80,000 and 110,000 sustainable good jobs over the next four years.

The president explained: “In the course of the campaign for the April 2011 elections, I identified unemployment as one of our biggest challenges that we must address to unlock our vast potential. My concern is, let’s identify those that have potential so that we can empower them. This year, when we met in Malabo, it was discovered that Africa was one of the continents where youth population is very high. In the United States of America and other continents they have population control measures, especially in the area of child bearing, but we discovered that in Africa there are no such control measures.

“And I believe that at that rate we will be able to create jobs faster. And that was why when we created the budget for this year we set aside a N50 billion fund for job creation. Today, we have come up with this programme to see how we can help the young people who have the creative ability and turning such creative ability into money.”

He called on state governors and the National Assembly to collaborate with the Federal Government to expand the programme.

Earlier, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, minister of finance, stated that the scheme was not all about winning the competition, but focusing on empowering those with good business ideas to put them into use, while those without good ideas would undergo training to grow their businesses.

According to her, “you know that unemployment is a big problem in Nigeria. We thought it was not all about talking, but getting things done. It was a challenge for us trying to come up with some ideas; we are trying to do something that’s been done in other parts of the world. We want to empower our youth to start thinking of how to create jobs, not how to get a job.”

YouWin! is a business plan competition aimed at job creation by encouraging and supporting entrepreneurial youth in Nigeria to develop and execute business ideas.

http://www.businessdayonline.com/NG/index.php/entrepreneur/my-business/28902-self-employment-bug-waxes-strong-as-youwin-debuts

Nice try GEJ!!!!!!!!!!

El Rufai already did this last year or so, albeit without the Federal Government's resources - but this was basically the same thing. He gave the youths $5,000 each for their business plans.

Don't believe me? Here you go: http://www.abujacity.com/abuja_and_beyond/2010/08/council-for-youth-empowerment---awards-young-entreprenuers-for-thier-brilliant-business-ideas.html


@Beaf. You can stop dancing palongo now. Good effort, but don't let me hear anything about this being GEJ's idea.

Government scamming its people. Shior