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The Federal Executive Council (FEC) on Wednesday approved a new N-Power scheme that is targeted at creating employment for 60,000 Nigerians aged 18-25 years.
Minister of Budget and Planning, Udoma Udoma announced it while briefing State House correspondents at the end of the FEC meeting chaired by President Muhammadu Buhari.
Mr Udoma said the new scheme, called the N-Power knowledge multi-track youth empowerment programme, will cost N5,595,669,250 with a completion period of nine months.
He said under the scheme, 12,000 unemployed or under-employed graduates aged 18-25 yrs will be trained and given relevant devices afterwards. He also said the training will be on mobile computing and commonly used electronic devices.
According to the minister, the federal government will spend N259,000 per youth on the training while an additional 207,000 will be spent for work tools.
Mr Udoma said the programme, which will be run under the National Social Investment Programme (NSIP), is open to all unemployed graduates. He disclosed that the contract for the programme was awarded to Softcome Ltd working with the officials of NSIP.
He also explained that after the training, each of the initial 12,000 selected and trained “will be empowered to train five other youth, leading to additional 60,000 jobs”