February 10, 2015 – President Goodluck Jonathan has said that his administration has employed about 4, 700 physically challenged youths under the Subsidy Reinvestment Empowerment programme(SURE-P).
The President who was speaking at the lunch of the Youth Entrepreneurship Strategy and the Nigerian Youth Entrepreneurship Network in Abuja said SURE-P has in addition catered for 120,000 young Nigerians and 42,000 women.
“We started with the implementation of the Community Services Scheme, under the SURE-P Program to cater for unskilled youth, and so far over 120,000 young Nigerians, including 42,000 women and 4,700 physically challenged youth across our country have been engaged in various projects like road maintenance, community security, sanitation, and so on”, he said adding that some of them are still undergoing training to succeed in the labour market.
“In the same spirit, we started the Graduate Internship Scheme, targeting university graduates with one year internships in private sector led enterprises, so that they can acquire requisite skills and experience that can improve their long-term employability. So far, about 22,000 young graduates have been placed under this program, and we are ramping up efforts to ensure that many more graduates are supported”, the President said.
He said the transformation of the economy from oil-based to non-oil economy has yielded results adding that 1.4 million jobs are provided every year on the average.
“Secondly, given the depth of the unemployment problem, we understood from the outset the need to directly intervene in job creation through a number of carefully designed programs.
He said his government remains the first in the history of Nigeria that will directly create 5,400 young entrepreneurs through the YouWin program.
“ I am also proud to say that the first 2,400 entrepreneurs have created an average of nine jobs each, with a total of 22,000 jobs so far.
“Nagropreneurs program will also support 750,000 young farmers across our nation. These programs have demonstrated that a lot can be achieved through entrepreneurship’, he said, adding that Entrepreneurs are the engine room of Nigeria’s economy.
“Our Entrepreneurs are responsible for more than 60% of our $510 billion dollars GDP, and our Micro, Small and Medium business sector is responsible for almost 98% of the new jobs created in our economy on an annual basis. This simply means that Nigeria is truly a Nation of Entrepreneurs, the President said.
