‘N-Power non-graduate scheme to build youth’s skills’

The Senior Special Assistant to the President on Job Creation and Youth Empowerment, Mr Afolabi Imoukhuede last Tuesday said the N-Power nongraduate scheme starting in September would build the competency skills of Nigerian youth.

Speaking with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), he said the programme would require a minimum entry level of Senior Secondary School Certificate (SSSC) and that graduates can also participate.

He said, “For the non-graduate programme, what we have designed is a skills-to-enterprise or skills-to-job programme. It is designed to really build competences that are relevant to the respective industries.”

He explained that by the budget the stipend was N10,000 monthly but added that the steering committee for the programme was making a case to increase it to N15,000 which had yet to be approved.

Besides the 50,000 non-graduate volunteers, 300,000 graduates were being selected from over 1.5 million applicants to complete the graduate scheme to 500,000. The 200,000 graduates picked last year were deployed across the three components of N-teach, N-health and N-agro in the 36 states and FCT.

What’s your assessment of the education sector in the country?

Any keen observer of the Nigerian education sector would admit that we are performing far below par. We are operating an obsolete and isolated system. We have unfortunately failed to move with the world. Our contemporaries like Malaysia, Singapore and India have enhanced their education sector. I think more is to be expected especially at the tertiary level of education where I have been as a student and a staff for over a decade.

What’s the idea behind the formulation of IREN?

The Initiative for Revival of Education in Nigeria (IREN) with registration number CAC/IT/ NO 87299 was formed in 2014 by a quartet of myself, Abba, Ameer and Dahiru, and have since steadily grew to almost 35 active members and counting. Most of the members are working in academic institutions. While studying abroad at that time, the quartet was concerned with the wide gap in the quality of education between Nigeria and that of our host countries. Thus, the NGO was formed in an attempt to revive education within the country.

IREN’s main vision is to become a think-tank group in giving policy advice to Nigeria’s governments. We have executed some projects which include a school debate conducted at government secondary school stadium in Kano. We have also written numerous articles concerning education on our blog at http://