President Goodluck Jonathan has
appealed to international development partners and the private sector
to support his government’s efforts to create jobs for the youth.
The President made the appeal on Monday
when he inaugurated the second edition of the Youth Enterprise With
Innovation in Nigeria (YouWin) programme aimed at providing grants to
about 1,200 entrepreneurs.
The President said he decided to devote
the edition solely to female entrepreneurs in recognition of the
increasingly central role women were playing in the nation’s overall
economic development.
He said, “I urge all stakeholders,
including our youths and their leaders in the private sector, as well
as international and development partners to join hands with us as we
expand this laudable initiative and give fresh hope to our young people.
“People may ask why the government
talks about YouWin; of course, we know that the present administration
is committed to creating jobs for Nigerians. And jobs can be created
through direct employment by government and her parastatals and
agencies; but, we believe that a more sustainable approach to job
creation is encouraging the private sector.”
“And to do that, we need to build young
entrepreneurs who will be able to employ five or more people and that
multiplier effect will give us more job opportunities than even
government expanding the parastatals that will make them less
productive. That is one of the cardinal points of YouWin,” he added.
He said the edition would also help
address the relatively low participation of women with just about 17
per cent of winners in the first edition, which was designed for both
men and women.
Under this phase, he said 1,200 women would receive between N1m and N10m over the next 12 to 18 months.
In addition to the grants provided for
the 1,200 winners, Jonathan said at least 6,000 aspiring young
entrepreneurs would be selected, trained and equipped with high quality
business skills each year.
This, he added, would enable them harness their business and job creation potential.
The President said, “The first reason
why we are focusing on women solely this time is that globally, the
world talks about women and children. It is a topical point globally
and Nigeria must be among the comity of nations.
“So, we must come up with programmes
that will help women and protect and save lives of children, that is at
the UN level. So, we must do things that other nations will copy from
us, we should not only be copying from others.”
“In another ways too, women, in terms of using small money to create opportunities, have done it better than men,” he added.
Jonathan also reiterated his position
that the era of godfathers must end in the country, saying it was high
time for things to be done based on merit.
He said, “One of the awardees said
earlier that after filling the forms, she wanted to get a contact in
the Ministry of Finance that will facilitate the process of her
winning; unfortunately, she couldn’t but later realised she didn’t even
need it.
“We want to change that mentality and
syndrome that you must know somebody to talk to somebody and we have
begun with the YouWin Programme. That mentality must change. Gradually,
we are changing it. You cannot change a society overnight, it is
step-by-step. I promise Nigerians that I will sanitise Nigeria.”
The Minister of Finance, Dr. Ngozi
Okonjo-Iweala, said the programme was designed for women because they
occupied a very strategic place in entrepreneurship in the country.
