As part of measures geared towards addressing the high rate of unemployable graduates in Nigeria, the TY Danjuma Foundation, in conjunction with the After School Graduate Development Centre( (AGDC) , Tuesday in Benin commenced an interactive training workshop for university final year graduates at the University of Benin.
The training programme which was sponsored by the TY Danjuma Foundation was aimed at developing business entrepreneurial skills among young school leavers.
Project Coordinator, Brian Oji and Otubure Godless in an interview explained that the emphasis is on graduates from Edo State noting that available manpower in the state is critical in driving the business environment.
“This symposium is geared towards solving the problem of youths unemployment in terms of employability and activating enterprise.
The youth’s unemployment is just not about people unable to get job, it is also about people being able to create jobs to encourage local activation of business and the creation of goods and services which will in turn lead to enterprise thereby filling the void of those who ordinarily would have been out of jobs. And that is why we are focusing on Edo State looking at final year graduates and see how we can activate the local economy,” he said.
He said part of the reason for bringing the training to the university campuses was to also stimulate academic discussion towards job creation for young graduates.
“We are focusing on campuses because we have knowledge driven labour , we believe that they are the ones coming into the labour market, so using the University is to get the academia and the private sector to start thinking. It is actually a round table to get our academia to do something about our curriculum, we need to think of something different,” he added.