National Commission for Nomadic Education (NCNE), on Monday in Abuja, stressed the need to empower youths with various skills for the betterment of Nigeria.
Executive Secretary of the commission, Prof. Bashir Usman, made stated this at the opening of a four-day workshop on the development of training manuals for skill acquisition for nomadic youths.
He said that the initiative of empowering the youth through skill acquisition and sustainable livelihood could help reduce the poverty rate in many rural societies and reduce youth restiveness.
Usman said that the program could also help in reducing social vices, such as cattle rustling, kidnapping, raping, rural banditry, piracy and incessant conflicts, leading to wanton destruction of lives and property.
According to him, when a youth learn skill, he can use such skill to feed, send his children to school, assist others with employment and invest to secure the future.
“The skill one learns can assist him till the end of his life. A youth who is empowered with improved animal husbandry skill can earn from it sustainably till he dies.
“The various skills provided in these all-important training manuals will provide the trainees with artistic, manipulative, life coping, life-long communicative empowerment skills, intellectual empowerment skills and problem-solving skills.
“Empowerment with skill acquisition is basically to ensure poverty eradication, good education standard, job creation, good governance, security/crime reduction, national growth, employment and wealth creation for self-reliance.
“Empowering nomadic youths is also a means through which they can be assisted to succeed in life and have the opportunity to develop their abilities to become role models who can influence their communities and earn a living,’’ he said.
According to Usman, when the youth are empowered through need-based skills, the society becomes a good place for all to live, as they will improve the economy of such a society.
He said that it was on the basis of this that the commission considered the need to gather academics, consultants, experts and technicians to develop the standard training manual.
Usman, however, urged the participants to put in their best in developing the standard training manuals for skill acquisition for nomadic youths.
In his address of welcome, the Director of Extension Education and Skill Development of NCNE, Dr Abdu-Umar Ardo, noted that the document would provide basic information and knowledge on various fields.
He listed the fields where the document would be useful to include: animal production (cattle and small ruminants), information and communication technology, entrepreneurship, fish farming and cosmetology.
Others were: bee keeping and honey processing, fashion designing as well as peace building and conflict management.
He said that the objectives of developing the training manual on various skills/trades for the nomadic youth and women were to increase the trainees’ skills in one or more areas of expertise.
Ardo said that the training manual was also aimed at helping to improve the trainees’ level of awareness on various skills to be acquired at the training.
He said that the manual would serve as a document that the trainees could go through before, during and after their training as well as serve as a reference material after the program.
Ardo, however, urged the experts to put in their best in the drafting of the document.
