Vice President Yemi Osinbajo has assured Nigerian youths that plenty opportunities will be made available in the areas of technology, manufacturing, agriculture, among others for them to earn decent living.
He said that one of the commitments of President Muhammadu Buhari administration in the past four years had been to ensure that youths seeking employment were engaged in large numbers.
Osinbajo’s spokesman, Laolu Akande, in a statement in Abuja, said that the vice president spoke at the inauguration of the Ogun State job portal, in Abeokuta on Thursday.
According to the vice president, the opportunity is just one as there will be several more openings.
Osinbajo said that the Federal Government was working on developing the agro-allied and other sector to attract young people interested in agriculture, manufacturing and technology.
“I want to say to you that one of the commitments of the Federal Government as well as the state government, as seen today, is in ensuring that hundreds of thousands of young people who want jobs are engaged.
“When we open the portal for the N-Power program we had 12 million youths but we were able to employ just 500,000 and we are going to engage more so we can have at least one million for a start; as we go on we will be able to engage more people.
“I was speaking earlier to the governor about plans of creating agro-allied companies here; there are so many young people who want to do something in agriculture but farming, as it is, is not that cool.
“What we are doing today with the agro-allied farming centers is to make youths realise that to be an agro-allied industrialist in Nigeria is a big deal and that they can make a lot of money from it.”
On improving the environment for the growth of technology and other sectors, Osinbajo assured Nigerian youths that all that would be required to support new businesses to grow in the sector was already being done.
He said that that there were opportunities in technology; adding that the Federal Government was setting up the Enterprise Bank to give young people who had start-ups an opportunity to get facilities.
Osinbajo urged young people to strive towards enhancing their skills and improving their capabilities to execute whatever task was assigned to them.
“At the end of the day, one of the important things that you must bear in mind is that not everyone will get a government job, but the best paying jobs are going to be available in technology, manufacturing, in agriculture, a whole range of jobs will be available.
“I urge you to patiently work towards getting an available opportunity.
“Sometimes, people especially young men and women don’t understand that continuous self-improvement is always going to be helpful.
“For example, we are doing business process outsourcing today, in other words, we are trying to train many young people who can do jobs for so many international companies, while they are here in Nigeria, and earn money locally.
“All of these opportunities are there but we must train ourselves, where ever the opportunity to train arises we must take that opportunity and am sure there will be so many that will come,” he said.
Osinbajo commended the governor for his foresight and the courage to tackle the menace of unemployment through the inauguration of the state job portal, noting that other states would copy from what was being implemented in Ogun State.
No fewer than 20 young graduates were given employment into the state’s public service at the launch of the job portal initiative.
