How we intend to change hate narrative among youths – Adhama
Alhaji Nasiru Sa’idu Adhama is the Special Assistant to the President on Youths and Students Affairs. In this interview, he explained what President Muhammadu Buhari has been doing to empower the youth in the country through his office in the last two years, among others.
The youth have played a great role in bringing President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration into government in May 29, 2015. What is this administration doing to compensate them?
That true and President Buhari’s administration has developed various strategies to empower them especially through the implementation of various Social Investment Programmes you see such as N-Power. One of such other programmes is the Presidential Youth Empowerment Scheme (P-YES) being spearheaded by my office. This is a Public Private Partnership initiated by the Office of the Special Assistant to the President on Youth & Students Affairs (OSAPYSA), in partnership with State Governments, Multilateral Development Organisations and the Private Sector, to provide a Quick-Wins solution for the country’s employment and youth empowerment drive.
The programme attempts to link beneficiaries to financing to support micro businesses across the country. Beneficiaries shall be micro businesses mainly run by individuals within the excluded sub-group of the population that have consistently been unable to meet the eligibility requirements for other programmes of the government. is
Did you take into consideration what governments at all levels are saying that they can’t end youths unemployment alone?
Of course, yes. We are aware of that that is why the presidency through my office partnered with the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation - Investment and Technology Promotion Office (UNIDO-ITPO) Network in Nigeria in the areas of youth SME Upgrading, Modernisation and provision of training through investment and technology transfer.
Our partnership aims to create more youth employment opportunities and to improve youth income by supporting enterprises expansion, enterprises start-up and support market creation for youth entrepreneurs.
In December 2016, UNIDO conducted the first batch of the trainthe-Trainer programme in Lagos to train an initial batch of trainees that would form the manpower required to deliver an Entrepreneurship Management training content nationwide, under its Enterprise Development & Investment Promotion (EDIP) Programme.
In August 2017, the partnership conducted a free workshop for 150 youths, comprising 75 males and 75 females, from Kano State on financial literacy. The participants were sensitized on the use of the Computer Model for Feasibility Analysis and Reporting (COMFAR) a product of UNIDO, which supports the development of business plans which are required fro SMEs to access financing. Further trainings on the use of the software shall be delivered in October 2017.
In that regards, my office also donated donated industrial sewing equipment to the Government of Adamawa State to support the creation of Garments Production Clusters in the State.
One area President Buhari gave serious attention because of its potential to create millions jobs for the youth is agriculture. That is why we developed Start Your Own AgriBusiness in Partnership with Bank of Agriculture (BOA).
This targets the high percentage of rural and urban youth, including young people who are active in agriculture, either farming on their own account or working for wages. Such smallholders usually have to engage in agricultural wage labour and other off-farm activities to make a living, relying on multiple incomegenerating activities.
The programme shall avail them with the skills for operating basic farming equipment including post harvest processing machines. At the end of the programme, participants shall be linked to financing to acquire these equipment for their own use and to serve the farming communities they reside.
Nigeria is passing through so many challenges that include ethnic and regional agitation, mostly driven by the youth in some parts of the country. What is the government doing in that regards?
The government is fully aware of that and has evolved ways of addressing such challenges. One of such ways is the Unity Challenge Reality Talent Hunt.
Following the success of the Peace and Unity Iftar (break of Ramadan fast) we hosted during Ramadan and the encouragement received from the Ag. President to further explore activities that would promote unity amongst Nigerian youths, my office went into partnership with a private company to develop a live reality talent proramme that would bring Nigerian youths together with a common purpose while celebrating the strengths and uniqueness in our diversity.
The unity challenge is a fusion of known live reality shows where talents, skills, and abilities are groomed and harnessed in a house, which will be called the unity house.
The unity challenge shall hold sacred all the values and morals we hold dear as a people. It will not only showcase the various talent that abound in the length and breadth of the country, but also strengthen our individual understanding of other cultures and values from the six geopolitical zones, including Abuja.
Our task is not just to counter the hate/divide narrative, but to change it. To counter, is only temporal but to change the narrative is much more. It needs the calculative and deliberate methodology to change the mindset and a creation of a new DNA for the future of our great country. We plan to formally unveil the Unity Challenge on 30th September, 2017.
What is unity Iftar all about?
It was held on Friday 16 June, 2017. We organised it following the emerging divisions within Nigerian dominant ethnic groups featuring calls for cessation of Biafra and the consequent eviction notice issued by a coalition of northern youth groups. We saw an immediate need to engage youth groups from across the length and breadth of Nigeria - who confirmed our belief that Nigerian youths are more united than it is being portrayed.
The decision to host the symbolic iftar with the leaders of the prominent youth groups in attendance was to send a strong message that we are more united than we are divided; we are more in sync that we are disconnected; we are more of Nigerians than we are the products of our ethnic backgrounds and religions.
The iftar was attended by the Senate leader Ahmed Lawan, Senator Ben Murray-Bruce, Senator Kabiru Marafa, Special Adviser to the President on Political Matters Babafemi Ojudu and over 80 leaders of youth groups from across the country, including the convener of the #ResumeOrResign campaign Deji Adeyanju. The youth leaders were convinced and were unanimous in a call for a united Nigeria despite our political, ethnic and religious differences.
Information Technology has been identified as one of the easiest source of employment to the youth. Is your government also leveraging on that?
My office in collaboration with A3 Foundation, Funds and Electronic Transfer Solution (FETS) Limited and CISCO have partnered to implement a youth empowerment programme that will provide Work Stations and Seed Grant in the form of a trading wallet for 1,000 youths at the first phase of the programme. They will undergo an 8-week training programme on mobile money with e-commerce and trading. They shall be certified by CISCO as FETS Mobile Money Agents.
The second phase of the programme shall enroll 2,000 additional youths for training and empowerment. In total, 3,000 youths shall become mobile money/ commodity exchange traders facilitated by the FETS platform, with capital assigned to each participant in his electronic mobile wallet. The third phase is proposed to target an additional 12,000 youths across the country.
Not only that, we are in partnershipto deliver an innovative program to provide basic education to Nigeria’s out-of-school children and children living in IDP camps, while creating employment opportunity for youth to serve as facilitators of d program.
The programme involves establishing education centres across the country in areas most needed and riding on the Mavis Pen - powered Talking Books to deliver basic literacy to out of school children and those living in IDP camps.
Has your office done anything to further the cause of Nigerian youths on the international scene?
It may interest you to know we’re tapping all available opportunities that will add value to Nigerian youths both locally and abroad. That was why I led a delegation of young professionals to the 2017 World Youth Forum of the United Nations Economic and Social Council (UN ECOSOC) in January, where the country was represented at numerous events focusing on pertinent issues affecting youth and the attainment of SDGs.
We have also engaged the European Union Delegation to Nigeria and ECOWAS, to end the evil of migration of our youths to europe through the Sahara and Mediterranean sea. We are working on seeing how their Emergency Fund For Africa can be deployed to empower youths at home and eventually discourage them from embarking on the perilous journey across the sahara to get to europe in search for greener pastures.
Talking about the United Nations, President Buhari called for the establishment of a dedicated UN Agency for Youth at last year’s UN General Assembly. What has been done so far?
Well, you see when President Buhari made that call at the General Assembly, he received widespread commendations for this, which shows his commitment to youth issues. My visit to the UN ECOSOC Youth Forum in January was to also follow up with the then UN Secretary General’s Envoy on Youth - Ahmed Alhendawi on subsequent actions taken in that regard. The UN Youth Envoy was very pleased with Nigeria’s support for Youth as displayed by President Buhari and assured of their commitment to see to the establishment of such an agency. Now that there is a new Envoy on Youth in the name of Miss Jayathma, my office has already commenced engagements with her. The office of the Youth Envoy has extended an invitation to us to attend this Years UN General Assembly, including a High-Level breakfast meeting with over 180 World Leaders on the margins of the General Assembly meetings.
What is the government doing on Youths sports development?
We introduced the #OneYouthOneMentor initiative which is aimed at creating a lasting impact in the lives of youth by adopting a mentee to be trained, guided and supported in our respective areas of specialty. This initiative is not exclusively targeting highly placed individuals for the society but all of us.
So far, we were able to secure the commitments of Nigerian football super stars such as Joseph Yobo, John Mikel Obi, Samson Siasia, Odion Ighalo, among others, to commit to mentoring Nigerian youths in sports.
What are the major challenges facing the implementation of these programmes?
There so many of them. One of them is funding. There are funding constraints to the achievement of the planned projects and programmes. Therefore the execution of the various activities will depend on the ability of the office to mobilise corporate funding, donor grants and Corporate Social Reponsibility (CSR) projects from relevant stakeholders.
Other constraint is that of resources. This involves programme coordination, monitoring and evaluation and project management activities which require equipment, financial and manpower resources. Given the wide scope of the projects and programs proposed in the blueprint for my office, the deployment of these required resources will go along way in addressing these challenges.