By IFEATU AGBU

The inspiring stories of Bill Gates’ Microsoft and Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook readily serve as reference points for the youths in nurturing their entrepreneurial dreams and positioning them to win big on innovations. Often, however, there is a challenge with providing the platform for them to hone their innate talents.

To bridge this gap and provide the stage for the youths to showcase their talents, the Niger Delta Development Commission, NDDC, has continued to come up with strategic youth development programmes, recognising that youth unemployment is one of the pressing issues facing the Niger Delta region.

It Is re-assuring that the NDDC is addressing the challenge of unemployment from different fronts, the latest being the roll out of a Youth Internship Scheme aimed at building the capacity of the young ones to ensure that they are sustainably empowered.

The first phase of the NDDC internship programme launched on July 30, 2024, by the Senate President, Chief Godswill Akpabio, will engage 10,000 youths in industries and organisations that would improve their skills, while the NDDC pays them a monthly stipend of N50, 000.00 naira.

Placing youths on internship roles will allow them to enhance their technical skills and acquire practical experience in sectors such as oil and gas, hospitality, and medicine, among others, to make them self-reliant.

Providing these diverse trainings will no doubt help the youths to acquire meaningful and self-sustaining skills that would improve their lives, support their families and communities and thus reduce criminality in the Niger Delta region.

The NDDC Managing Director, Dr. Samuel Ogbuku, explains the rationale behind the Youth Internship Scheme, stating that it would provide relief to the youths and help them attain skills and work experience to enhance their employability and entrepreneurial capabilities.

He further notes that participants are placed in relevant industries and organisations to gain practical experience and on-the-job training. The programme includes mentorship components where experienced professionals guide the interns and after completing the internship, participants may receive support in securing employment or starting their businesses.

The NDDC has continued to emphasise the importance of building the capacity of youths through deliberate programmes in its determined march to transits from transaction to transformation.

For the NDDC Executive Director, Projects, Sir Victor Antai, the new internship scheme is a bold step towards changing the narrative of a militant Niger Delta to an intellectual activism. He affirms that the scheme is not merely a financial intervention but a symbol of NDDC’s commitment to nurturing and empowering the next generation.

Antai posits: “The Heartbeat of a nation lies in the vigour and vitality of its youth, yet in the Niger Delta, the beat has faltered under the weight of impoverishment borne out of a very difficult terrain and limited opportunities. Together, we can turn the tide of unemployment and steer the Niger Delta towards a brighter future.”

In driving its holistic empowerment programmes, the NDDC developed a new concept of working with the Niger Delta Chamber of Commerce in the training of youths and aspiring entrepreneurs in the Niger Delta region.

According to the NDDC Managing Director, the collaboration with the chamber of commerce was aimed at supporting small and medium-scale enterprises.

He explained: “The Chamber of Commerce will strengthen young entrepreneurs in the region. It is no longer acceptable that our youths will be at home and be receiving stipends. Hence, we have changed the NDDC Youth Volunteer programme to Youth Internship Programme, where youths will be attached to organisations for a specified period to enhance their skills.

“The chamber of commerce will help us to ensure that the programme is sustainable. We will focus on empowering young entrepreneurs because the government cannot employ everybody.”

The NDDC boss said further that the Commission would also partner with the Bank of Industry to fund projects and support businesses to facilitate the success of the Commission’s youth development programmes.

With the Bank of Industry in the mix, youths in rural areas can be sure of receiving support through the Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises, MSMEs, programme, while those in urban centres will be assisted under the Small and Medium Enterprises, SMEs, category.

It is significant that NDDC has given more opportunities and hope to Niger Delta youths through the Holistic Opportunity Projects of Engagement, HOPE, meant to identify the interests of the youths for skills training.

The youth development and empowerment scheme, designed to create a comprehensive resources database of the youth population of the Niger Delta region, is meant to provide a platform to empower youths of the region on sustainable basis.

Project HOPE marks a turning point in our youth development and empowerment because it is all-inclusive and designed for sustainability. Things can only be sustainable when they are data-driven. The project would create a database for youths, women, and entrepreneurs. This would enable development agencies to see clearly what the youths want.

The new initiative, which is coming after many years of unplanned and mismanaged projects execution in the region, will focus on the needs of the youths, their qualifications, skills, passion, interests, and employment status.

So far, over one million youths have registered in the Project HOPE database and many more are still registering with the encouragement of various youth organisations. The database will serve as a plank for data-driven planning, enabling the formulation of impactful policies and programmes targeted at the youths.

No doubt, the NDDC will use the Project Hope to change the negative perception that the region’s youth are inclined toward militancy, when in fact, stakeholders in the region are now talking about intellectual militancy.

The Niger Delta stakeholders believe that we are at the dawn of a new tech programme, known as Mili-tech, which will signify a transition from militancy to technology. As if to prepare grounds for this transition, the NDDC has entered into partnership with the Rivers State Government to use its Information Technology Centre in Port Harcourt as one of its technology hubs in the region.

Apart from technology, the Project HOPE aims to cover other key areas, such as agriculture, music and arts, entrepreneurial development, marine and internship.

The good thing Is that in designing its youth development programmes the NDDC relies on stakeholder engagements to interact with the relevant groups, because it realises that in planning for programmes one must involve those concerned at the foundational level.

Skills acquisition and human capital development are some of the key areas the Federal Government is paying special attention to in order to engage the youths and help to improve the lives of people in the Niger-delta region by helping them develop sustainable entrepreneurial skills.

Entrepreneurial, vocational and leadership value enhancement is the key to unlock the potentials and possibilities available to the youths in the Niger Delta region and this justifies the importance which the NDDC attaches to industrial development and human capacity building.

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