The Minister of Youth Development, Comrade Ayodele Olawande, Wednesday re-affirmed the ministry’s commitment to empower and protect every Nigerian youth.
He stated this at the media parley for the ministry’s Correspondents on in Abuja, where he highlighted many renewed hope initiatives that will brighten the future of many youth.
The minister said in the last 40 years, youth in Nigeria were unable to have access to government until now that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu put things right and will soon help many Nigerian youth to thrive.
The minister stated that some of the initiatives, like Green House in local government, Youth Bank, Youth Trust Fund, Nigerian Youth Academy, Nigerian Youth Help Desk, One Youth 2 Skills and others that will lift many youth out of unemployment era to employer of Labour.
He added that his objective was to ensure protection, empowerment and support for young people across the country, both formal and informal.
“My priority as a minister is to empower youth. When I was Minister of State, we had a partnership with a lot of organisations, even within the government, departments and agencies. That is why we are telling all Nigerian that the door of youth ministry is open for collaboration.”
He added that the ministry has launched a Youth Activities Dashboard that serves as a collation point for all efforts of the government targeted at the youth population.
“Today, we launched the Youth Activities Dashboard. We are saying that everybody should go on this dashboard. No more sending stories to you on WhatsApp that is not correct. No more telling you that there are government initiatives that do not exist.
“We are going to put up activities that will let you discover that we have over 7,000 activities of youth in MDAs that are not residing in the ministry,” he said.
He also said the ministry will launch the Nigerian Youth Academy in January, which he described as the ministry’s version of Coursera, an online learning platform.
“Very soon, in January too, we will be coming up with NiYA, which is Nigerian Youth Academy,” he stated.
