KADUNA – The Kano state governor, Dr Abdullahi Ganduje yesterday the state government has spent over N200 million to train over two hundred indigenes of the state to acquire skills as Mechanics, Panel Beaters and welders at the Peugeot Automobile or Nigeria Training Centre.
Dr Ganduje who made the disclosure in Kaduna Wednesday when he visited the trainees amin Kaduna to assess their performance said the initiative was to reduce the level of unemployment in the state and to provide a skilled manpower in modern mechanics and mechatronics.
The governor who was represented by his commissioner for Information, Mallam Garbage Mohammed said that an earlier batch of 50 trainees who had graduated from the training have been provided working tools and are gainfully self-employed as mechanics, panel beaters and welders in the state.
According to him, when his administration took over in 2015,
“we realized that we had quite a number of youths who were not employed. Even those who had gone through normal education were not employed. We had a number of graduates, even those with higher qualification who were unemployed.
The governor said there was need for us to come up with strategies that will ensure that we train youths to empower them, give them capital co that they can be self employed.
We decided to approach PAN Training Centre for the Trining of our youths within one year. We graduated 72 last year and at the end of the training programmes we gave tools worth N12million that was distributed to all the graduands and we empowered them with N50,000 each to enable them go back to their various local government to get a small place to operate from”.
He said from the post graduation monitoring unit, it was reported that more than 90% of the graduands of the first batch are fully self employed and are earning decent living.
He said out of the present crop of 150 trainees, one quarter of them are women as a way of encouraging women to be self employed and self reliant.
The governor said apart from paying for the training cost of the trainees, the state government also provided accommodation as well as of ending for them. He said the state government intends to increase the number of intakes from the present 150 to 500 trainees next year.
Asked how the trainees were selected, the governor said those who have had any form of formal education were giving priorities because of the natural advantage that they have.
In his remarks, the Director General of the PAN Training centre, Elizabeth Emordi commended the Kano state government for the initiatives and urged other States to emulate the Kano state initiative.
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