BY BENEDICT NWACHUKWU, ABUJA
Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development, Sadiya Umar Farouq, has declared open a training workshop for 37 Master Trainers for the N-Skills Programme under the Federal Government’s National Social Investment Programme, N-Power, in Abuja.
The Minister said that the N-Skills programme targets the marginalised and disadvantaged population, including those with primary or no formal education.
Represented by the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry, Bashir Nura Alkali, the Minister stated that the 37 Master Trainers would later coordinate the training of 6,475 youths selected from the 36 states and FCT.
“The Ministry worked with experienced training service providers to carefully select those to be trained today as Master Trainers. We expect these Master Trainers to effectively play their role of coordinating the training of the target beneficiaries of the N-Skills programme in their respective states and FCT.
“The success of the programme relies, to a large extent, on your capacity and commitment to ensure effective delivery of the training, especially in the three important areas of life skills, foundational skills and entrepreneurial skills.
“I urge you to, therefore, participate actively to learn and enhance your capacity. I am confident that with the calibre of resource persons and facilitators assembled here, this goal will be achieved,” he said.
Earlier, the National Coordinator of NSIP, Dr Umar Bindir, stated that N-Power targets delivery capacity and capability alongside skills. He added that it was one of the measures being taken to ensure that no one is left behind under the President Muhammadu Buhari administration to lift 100 million Nigerians out of poverty by 2032.
“The training targets the unlearned so that every category of Nigerians will have something to fall back on,” he said.
The Team Leader of N-Power, Nsikak Okon, stated that 175 N-Skills beneficiaries were selected through random sampling from each of the 36 states and the FCT.
Okon said, “We target market places and other informal places as well as the streets.
“The essence of training the Master Trainers is to ensure that they get it right from the foundation. They have to know the entrepreneurial skills as well as life skills so that when they go back to the grassroots, they will be able to impart what they have been taught.”
It was learnt that upon completion of the training, the target beneficiaries would be provided with Start-up Kits.
