40million Nigerian Youths Still Unemployed - NECA

The Director-General of the Nigeria Employers' Consultative Association (NECA), Mr Olusegun Oshinowo, said that over 40 million Nigerian youths remained unemployed, in spite of the Federal Government’s efforts at reducing unemployment.

Oshinowo made the announcement on Wednesday in an interview with newsmen shortly after inspecting facilities at Ruff and Rumbles Wares in Lagos.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that Ruff and Rumbles are into children's fashion.

The company also engages in the training of youths in fashion making.

He said that the idea of Nigerian youths seeking white collar jobs would never take them to anywhere.

The director-general said that NECA collaborated with the Industrial Training Fund (ITF), to ensure that unemployment was reduced in Nigeria by training youths on dress making.

"NECA and ITF are partnering with Ruff and Rumbles Clothes so see how we can use their company train interested youths that have passion for fashion so that they can have a more meaningful life to themselves after the training,’’ he said.

The association boss said that this would entail getting unemployed Nigerians to acquire technical and vocational skills with the purpose of seeking self- employment.

He said the aim of the training was to take unemployed youths out of the streets by training them on skills of their choice.

"We will make the training open to the public so that the process will be fair. The training will also be free and the trainees will also be given some stipend.

"What NECA and ITF are doing presently is to have a workable mode of reducing the unemployment in the country.

"We will expand the scope of our programme by taking Nigerian youths that are willing to be trained out of the unemployment market.

"We feel this is the way we must recruit so that we can train more Nigerians to be useful in the society.’’

Oshinowo said that NECA needed to generate more awareness to make Nigerians show more appreciation to what the association was doing.

"This will enable the government to provide more funds to solve unemployment in the country.’’

The ITF Director-General, Dr Juliet Chukkas-Onaeko, disclosed that President Goodluck Jonathan had mandated the body to create three million jobs every year.

He described the partnership with NECA as a beautiful one that would make the ITF to achieve its mandate.

"Lots of Nigerians need to be impacted and this Ruff and Rumbles Clothes environment is a better platform to train the youths on skills acquisition,’’ Chukkas-Onaeko said.

Mrs Adenike Ogunlesi, the Chief Executive Officer of Ruff and Rumbles Clothing, said that the project was part of the company’s corporate social responsibility in reducing the level of unemployment in the country.

Ogunlesi said she was delighted to work with NECA and ITF in using the company as a platform for training jobless youths to be self-employed.

She said the duration for the training would be four months, pleading with other companies to partner with ITF and NECA to get more youths trained.

She said that the company's aim was to be the leader in children's fashion in West Africa by 2015. (NAN)