Equipping Youths with Vocational Skills the NDYEP Way

Mary Nnah reports on the recent move by Niger Delta Employment Pathways, an initiative of the Foundation for Partnership Initiative in the Niger Delta, through its pilot project with funding support from Ford Foundation, to train and equip 4,355 youth with in-demand vocational skills in four growing sectors, which are ICT, building construction, agriculture, and finished leather

To curb unemployment, crimes, and youth restiveness nationwide, the Youth Employment Pathways (YEP), an initiative of the Foundation for Partnership Initiative in the Niger Delta (PIND), has through its pilot project, Niger Delta Youth Employment Pathways (NDYEP) with funding support from Ford Foundation, trained and equipped 4,355 youth with in-demand vocational skills in four growing sectors, which are ICT, building construction, agriculture, and finished leather.
A total of 2,033 successful participants were linked to immediate waged employment or supported to commence innovative enterprises of their own. YEP was piloted in two phases between September 2017 and March 2021 as an NDYEP project in three states in the Niger Delta region, namely Abia, Akwa Ibom, and Rivers.
Following its success in the pilot states, the project was extended to Delta State in 2021 as the Youth Employment Pathways – Delta. The initiative was designed in emerging sectors of agriculture, construction, finished leather, ICT, and renewable energy that showed great potential for youth employment according to the labor market assessment conducted in the states.
One of those involved in the training of the youth, Lady Chigozie Uche, a technical and educational trainer based in Abia State, explained the lack of access to economic opportunities in the Niger Delta, Nigeria’s oil-rich region is one of the leading causes of unemployment. She expressed the belief therefore that the project is a panacea to the twin problems of unemployment and restiveness in the Niger Delta.
“We trained about 350 youth in construction fields such as carpentry, masonry, electrical installations, and welding. Out of these youth that we trained, there are about 46 that are working on their own now”, she recalled.
“NDYEP has helped to address unemployment in the Niger Delta because these youth wouldn’t have been where they are now without this programme.”
Unemployment has always been linked to crimes and militancy in the Niger Delta region, however, Uche, whose Kiara de Luke Academy was recently signed up as an implementing partner in the scale-up of the YEP project, revealed that many youths who hitherto were involved in kidnapping are now coming out to find out about such training opportunities, adding that, they now know that learning a craft is far better than going into crime.
“It has reduced crimes and criminality because we can move freely around here now. We had three ex-militants that joined our first training, and today, they are doing well”, she noted.
Executive Director of Azure Gold Development Foundation, Fabian Emmanuel, who is also an implementing partner of the project, believes that creating job skills and opportunities can resolve the youth unrest in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria. “Militancy, criminality, and unemployment are linked together. These hitherto idle people and unemployed have been taken out of unemployment, and are engaged”, Emmanuel said.
“They now become very busy, involved in productive activities. It has taken them out of those vices”. While admitting that more needs to be done to address unemployment in the region. He said the YEP is “helping to reduce the unemployment curve in the Niger Delta because some of those we have trained, we have had them in different enterprises”.
For Mary Ogbonna, being part of the project was a dream come true because she was never satisfied with working as a salesgirl at the Aba market before coming across the opportunity to be trained under YEP’s pilot initiative, NDYEP.
“Before the NYEP project, I had a life, but it was not the kind of life I dreamt of. I used to be one of those sales girls at the market in Aba to assist my aunty, but then I have always wanted more for myself,” she said. After taking part in the first phase of the project, she has worked as a market research journalist for Google PPDC and Google digital skills trainer and even co-founded a startup.
Buoyed by the success recorded in its pilot phases and the potential for job creation as well as reduction of crimes and militancy, PIND, in March 2022, awarded over N104million in grants to 12 implementing partners to train 1,000 youth in the Niger Delta region in various technical and soft vocational skills for at least six months, starting in May 2022. Tunji Idowu, the Executive Director of PIND, commended the implementing partners whose performance, according to him, precipitated the success of the project.
“I would like to acknowledge our implementing partners whose performance during the pilot phase led to its success”, Idowu said at the signing ceremony to onboard the 12 implementing partners involved in the project’s scale-up in Abia, Akwa Ibom, and Rivers states.
The partners must improve their service delivery in the scale-up phase to ensure the youth participants make early transitions to jobs and entrepreneurship after vocational skills training. The PIND Chief explained the Foundation’s decision to scale up the project to the original pilot states because there remained a need for such based on the lack of a feasible economic environment that opened doors for waged income.
The YEP model has allowed for adequate time for participants to demonstrate competence in their chosen trades. It has helped in providing post-training support such as job linkages and enterprise/ start-up support and mentorship, which are the components lacking in most of the other skills acquisition programmes organised by the government and other organisations.
PIND said the YEP is an innovative model designed not just to train but to prepare youth with market-relevant skills for securing sustainable jobs. So, implementing partners believe that such a unique model should be sustained and replicated by governments in the Niger Delta region.