The National Directorate of Employment, NDE, has created 54 additional micro businesses and strengthened 1,766 existing ones nationwide in the last three months.
The Director-General of NDE, Mallam Abubakar Nuhu Fikpo, made this known in Abuja recently during an interaction with journalists.
He said the project was carried out under the Small Scale Enterprises, SSE, programme of the directorate.
According to him, N35,680,000.00 was granted as loan to NDE graduate trainees nationwide under the SSE to either establish new businesses or strengthen the existing ones.
He added that 54 graduated trainees under the Start Your Own Business, SYOB, scheme were granted loan of N500,000.00 each to start their micro businesses after the completion of their training.
The director general said 1, 766 other existing businesses established by the NDE were also boosted through loan disbursement under the Micro Enterprise Enhancement Scheme, MEES.
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The 18 benefitting states of the SYOB which cut across the six geopolitical zone of the country include Abia, Adamawa, Bauchi, Bayelsa, Benue, Ebonyi, Edo, Ekiti, Gombe and Jigawa.
Others are Kano, Katsina, Nasarawa, Osun, Oyo, Plateau, Sokoto and the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja.
In like manner, he said, disbursement of loans under the Micro Enterprise Enhancement Scheme took place in Akwa-Ibom, Adamawa, Abia, Anambra, Borno, Edo, Ekiti, Jigawa, Katsina, and Kebbi.
Others are Kogi, Kwara, Lagos, Ogun, Osun, Plateau, Sokoto, Taraba, Yobe and Zamfara States.
The DG said states not captured in the present batch had enjoyed same exercise in the early months of the year – February and March.
He said SSE programme was one of the four core programmes of the NDE.
The programme, according to him, was designed to inculcate into the unemployed graduates of tertiary institutions and other interested persons, which include retirees, the spirit of entrepreneurship, creativity and self-reliance with a view to assisting them set up their own businesses in order to create employment for them and become employers of labour.
“The business training covers Entrepreneurship Development Programme (EDP), which introduces NYSC members to the opportunities for self-employment, Enterprise and Finance Counselling Clinic (NDE-EFCC), a financial counseling clinic for struggling enterprises, and Micro Business Skills meant to expose school leavers, artisans and graduated trainees of the NDE’s programmes to the rudiments of enterprise creation, organisation and profitable operations.
The department further empowers graduates of the business trainings with soft loans as “Business Start up Capitals”.
SYOB scheme provides business training and facilitates establishment of micro businesses as a means of job generation and wealth creation.
MEES, on the other hand, was designed to meet the needs of micro business operators who are desirous of expanding the scope of their businesses.
Over the years NDE has committed billions of naira to entrepreneurship training and capacity acquisition and has created millions of self–employment for Nigerians especially the university graduates.
These are aside loan facilities under other key programmes of the NDE such as Vocational Skills Development, VSD; Rural Employment Promotion, REP, and Special Public Works, SPW, through which diverse trainings and financial interventions have produced millions of jobs.
The DG was quoted as saying that NDE would not only be providing skill acquisition and jobs for the unemployed, but would also explore all possible avenues to keep them in business.
He said aside linkages to financial institutions, arrangements were in the pipeline to form the beneficiaries of NDE into cooperative groups through which soft loans can be easily accessed and utilized for business expansion.
He called on the unemployed Nigerians to avail themselves of job opportunities as presented by the Federal Government of Nigeria through the NDE and stop the hunt for elusive white-collar jobs.
