By Yolamchi Ukaga
Abia State has received a nod from the federal government to host the South-East Training Center of the N-Power Programme. This is sequel to the federal government assessment of the state’s implementation of the N-Power programme and Governor Okezie Ikpeazu’s efforts at ensuring that youths of the state are not left out in the social investment scheme,
The move was also boosted, by a recent visit of the Minister of Labour Chris Ngige to the newly constructed skill acquisition centres in the state, where he observed that Abia has all the facilities required to train thousands of applicants.
The State Focal Person of the N-Power Programme, Chinenye Nwaogu, who through a press release, made available to Orient Daily, informed the state of the development and thanked Governor Ikpeazu for his untiring support to the social investment office. He assured that the beneficiaries in the state would continue to enjoy the best of services and implored them to maximise the opportunity the programme has presented.
Nwaogu further stated that the N-Build component of the N-power programme, aims at training youths in building services.
No fewer than 50,000 non-graduate applicants in the N-Power volunteer programme, would be deployed in late September and trained in October, the presidential aide on job creation and youth empowerment, Afolabi Imoukhuede, has said.
Imoukhuede said that the deployment was delayed to enable the job creation team to provide all needed training materials for the volunteers. He explained that the volunteers would be deployed to begin three-month vocational training in seven disciplines followed by a nine-month apprenticeship in related industries before venturing into self-employment.
According to him, the September deployment was because officials had mapped the volunteers, who applied in 2016 to go to the various centres, for physical verification to ensure that those in existing N-Power scheme were removed.
“Contracts were awarded as at the end of June and, as I speak now, literally all contractors have delivered to the six zonal warehouses that we then appointed. So, we have a warehouse for South-South in Edo, which is a gateway into South-South, for South-East we have a warehouse in Umuahia, while Lagos will host South-West.
“For North-East, we have Yola, for North-West, we have in Kaduna and for North-Central, we have a warehouse in Abuja.
“These are zonal warehouses that have received tools for all the vocational trades from automobile to carpentry and all the seven disciplines.
“In addition to that, the training consumables needed at the centres to bring the volunteers to the level of industry competence were also procured and distributed in all the six zonal warehouses.
“So, there will be no case of the training being given out in Yobe different from the one in Kaduna or in Umuahia and also no question of some centres having consumables and others claiming they were not supplied,’’ he explained.
The presidential aide said that a centre assessment committee headed by the Labour Minister and him as alternate chair, was set up early in the year to visit the zones.
He explained that with the committee, the N-Power team had actually visited the states and picked again three states in each geopolitical zone, plus Lagos and Abuja. https://orientdailynews.com/abia-to-host-n-power-south-east-training-centre/Seun Lalasticlala Mynd44 
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