By Haruna Usman- Birnin Kebbi
Youth who form more than half of the population of Africa’s most populous nation, Nigeria, has been the bedrock of nation-building in terms of provision of security, education and economic revival of Nigeria.
A substantial number of youth are in the army, police, civil defence and other security outfits in the country laying the lives and giving their energies to protect the aged, political and public officers in the government circles.
Poised to the change, the narrative of youth abandonment, NYCN under Ahmed Abubakar Khalifa has set the ball rolling to emancipate the youth particularly in Kebbi State.
Ahmed’s engagement with government and critical stakeholders in the struggle to emancipate the youth from the shackles of poverty and joblessness bore fruits as youth in the state are fully engaged with over one hundred of them appointed in Governor Nasir Idris government serving at different capacities while a large chunk of them are into modern farming contributing to economic value chain and have upscaled employment rate in the state.
The youth champion, upon coming onboard, built a multi-million naira youth centre where currently hundreds of youth are receiving training on various choice trades for self reliance. In 2025, well over two thousand youth are expected to graduate from the centre which by extension will produce thousand of trained youth to fight unemployment in the state.
National Youth Council of Nigeria also intends to undertake education scholarship when it gets grants from critical stakeholders and well to do persons in the society. The scholarship, however, will lay emphasis on science, technology and digital studies in order to add to the number of doctors, engineers and technologist who will in turn drive the state economy from the acquired expertise.
The youth body also sustained fight against drug addictions and prostitution amongst young girls, thus the body has rehabilitated a substantial number of drugs addicts and is now working to give grants to widows and divorces in order to shelve them from anti-social behaviours like prostitution and syrup consumption which the youth body believes lack of business is the reason for their immoral habits.
Though paucity of funds is a factor militating against the total emancipation of youth in Kebbi, but the leadership of the youth body remains undeterred as it struggles to fund her activities to meet the demands of youth in the state.
