Amb. Jonathan Ojadah, Global President , United Nations International Peace and Governance Council, says the major focus of his programme is to end insurgency and promote youth empowerment in Nigeria.
Ojadah made this known in an interview with Newsmen on Friday in Lagos.
He said that effective and vibrant youth empowerment would curb youthful exuberance and eradicate poverty.
According to him, the major focus has been on curbing insurgency and seeing how the council can mitigate insecurity issues that have been affecting the lives and property of people in the North Central region of Nigeria.
“Our focus has been Plateau, Benue, and Kogi. As you may know, there have been high numbers of insurgency and banditry in those states.
“What we do is to ensure that we facilitate funding for peace missions through our peace initiatives with the state government and enlightening members of the public on conflict resolution mechanisms.
“Also, giving humanitarian aid to the communities that have been affected by banditry and insurgency.
“So far so good, we have our footprints in these three states and we also hope to extend the project to other regions in the country,” he said.
The ambassador said the initiative would focus more on human capital development through community vocational empowerment and skills acquisition centres.
According to him, the council will work in collaboration with state governments to ensure there is adequate land to build vocational skill centres.
He added that by virtue of the partners who joined forces with them to equip the vocational centres, it helped to give a robust entrepreneurship and empowerment skills development and acquisition programmes for the young generation.
Ojadah added that adequate equipment to work with would enable youths to have a sense of belonging in the society.
“Once the youth are equipped with good vocational skills, it gives them that entrepreneurial spirit.
“By the time we work with government agencies like SMEDAN, to help enforce some policies that assist these youths in developing their small and medium scale enterprise ventures, there will be huge improvement,” Ojadah said.
The ambassador added that one of the major challenges facing the youth is lack of proper orientation, as they needed to be properly guided and orientated toward community development.
“That’s where the role of education comes in, we need to enlighten these youths more.
“We need to keep coming up with skill sensitisation projects, enlightening these youths on what they can do for themselves for meaningful existence.
“In Ajah community of Lagos state for example, you will see that a lot of young teenagers and youths are out there on the streets doing nothing.
“So if we can have more skilled entrepreneurship development or vocational skills development centres, it will be able to accommodate these children.
“And not just these teenagers being on the streets or being trained, they need to be equipped with adequate materials or start up packs.
“Governments need to encourage them in their various capacities to ensure that they are well-developed to become entrepreneurs for their future,” he said.
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