FG Urged to Increase IT Investment for Youth Empowerment

Information Technology (IT) training company, NIIT Fortesoft Systems has called on the federal government to invest more in empowering the Nigerian youths in IT training.

NIIT gave the advice in Lagos during the graduation ceremony of Nigerian youths who participated in the “Streets2click” programme sponsored by JMG Limited and Jamara Nigeria.

The Graphics and Hardware Class graduation ceremony was held recently in Lagos.

The maiden edition of the training, which ran for six weeks, was aimed at empowering young, educationally disadvantaged Nigerian youths in order to put them in a better position for employment and self-empowerment purposes.

The Managing Director at the Surulere Branch Office of NIIT, Mr. Adedokun Oduyemi, who was represented by Mrs. Joseph, in his opening speech, explained that it was worthy to note that the training was about taking people who are brilliant but just don’t have the opportunities to develop their talent and excel in their chosen career, and creating access for them.

“It is a great milestone for the company and I will encourage the participants to utilise the skills they are being impacted with. We are an IT training company and during the COVID-19 Pandemic, we saw the need to give back to the society and take IT to the streets to make an impact.

“The idea of ‘Streets2click’ is to empower youths for IT excellence and ensure that by end of the year 2021, we are able to deposit into our economy a minimum of 2000 youths. The vision of the initiative is to transform the ordinary person on the street to become an IT skilled person,” Oduyemi said.

The Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Co-ordinator at JMG Limited, Vera Umanah, explained that they partnered with NIIT to sponsor the participants because they realised a lot of people do not have the opportunity to express themselves and gain skills.

“We came on board to help people learn new skills. We weren’t expecting it to be this big but I’m really impressed. “I think this is a very good initiative for the Government to take advantage of, if the youth can channel this energy into something that will bring a positive change, it will be a very big opportunity if government can take over,” Umanah said.

The Project Manager, Streets2click, Naomi-Job Kalu, revealed that they had to go to the streets and slums to get the right beneficiaries.