Empowerment is like Pocket Money, It can’t tackle Unemployment – Sunday Dare

Minister for Youths and Sports, Sunday Dare has expressed that empowerment can no longer solve the problem of unemployment in the country. He described it as pocket money.

The minister spoke on Monday when he appeared before the house of representatives committee on youth development.

He said the ministry has gone beyond offering empowerment programmes to investing in youths across the country.

“We have a massive youths population, most of them waiting for opportunities for digital skills to upscale themselves, for opportunities to make themselves starters of entrepreneurs, for opportunities in the areas of education, technical and otherwise; and also looking for opportunities that will make them be included in government. These have been the focus of our budgets year in, year out and 2022 is no different,” he said.

“We have been in a hurry to get support for our youths, and as we speak today, 6,054 have benefitted from the Nigerian Youths Investment Fund, receiving between N250,000 to N3 million. We have gone ahead to make sure that on our website, we have released the names of the beneficiaries, the amount they received and the sector in which the SMEs are operated.

“Our goal is to ensure that we increase the number of beneficiaries, that is why we have developed our own loan management system. The loan management system will give us 100 percent control. There is no country that has been able to fight youth unemployment without a deliberate policy on investing in the lives of their youths.”

Dare stated that the ministry is working to create at least two youth development centres in each geopolitical zone to create more development opportunities for the youths.