Shettima champions youth empowerment graduation ceremony

Vice President Kashim Shettima has reaffirmed the Federal Government’s commitment to empowering youths through skills acquisition, emphasising its importance in addressing unemployment and driving economic transformation.

He underscored the inevitability of skills acquisition among the young demographic in Nigeria, noting that the nation can no longer afford to keep growing a population of idle, unemployed and unemployable youths.

According to a statement by his spokesman, Stanley Nkwocha, Shettima spoke on Friday during the Combined Graduation Ceremony of the Wing Commander Abdullahi Ibrahim Vocational and Technology Institute in Lafia, the Nasarawa State capital.

The Vice President stated: “The danger of paying lip service to technical and vocational skills acquisition is one none of us is prepared to experience, and the examples of various low- and middle-income countries, especially the Asian Tigers, are there to inspire the direction of our National Development Plans and push our economic drive towards a destination we all desire—a place of boom.

“This is why His Excellency, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, GCFR, has championed economic reforms beyond the usual cosmetic fixes to lay the groundwork for greater opportunities ahead. With increased allocations to the states, I believe that we are more than energised to fund our development programmes”.

Recalling Nigeria’s origin as an agrarian nation, Senator Shettima noted that there is no greater inspiration than concentrating on “the magnitude of initiatives made possible by the proceeds of the sector and the hard work of those skilled and unskilled workers who were the fulcrum of our pre-oil economy”.

He said the graduation ceremony was an opportunity to celebrate the sincerity of the administration’s promise to create avenues for upskilling and reskilling the nation’s workforce across sectors.

VP Shettima pointed out that the institute is a vehicle through which the APC-led government fulfils its promise to Nigerians to “prioritise poverty reduction, employment generation, and job creation”.

Cautioning against harbouring the population of unemployed youths in the country, he said, “The reality we inherited points to the existence of a link between youth unemployment, violence, and other associated crimes, and as such, we cannot afford to create an idle, unemployed, or unemployable demographic.

“Our response, over which we gather here today, is to build on our agenda of providing our youths with skills to either find gainful employment or become self-reliant. This grand event, the Combined Graduation Ceremony for the graduands of the Wing Commander Abdullahi Ibrahim Vocational and Technology Institute, Lafia, aligns with the direction the world is headed—the path of skill acquisition.”