Governor Akinwunmi Ambode of Lagos State has released N6.25 billion, being the first tranche of the N25 billion Lagos Employment Trust Fund (ETF), and directed the managers of the fund to immediately hit the ground running.
The board of the ETF was recently inaugurated with the charge to develop strategies to disburse the funds to suitably qualified applicants with tested business ideas and entrepreneurial skills that can be turned into wealth. The state government is injecting N6.25 billion annually into the ETF over the next four years, bringing it to N25 billion.
Meanwhile, the Lagos State government and Nigeria Employers’ Consultative Association (NECA) have agreed on a partnership that will see the state latch on existing NECA-Industrial Training Fund’s (ITF) skill acquisition and job creation model, in its quest for wealth creation and employment generation in Nigeria’s largest economy state.
The last few years had seen NECA partnering the ITF to train hundreds of youths to acquire technical, vocational and entrepreneurial skills in different fields, including auto mechanic and fashion. Some graduands of the training programme usually conducted using NECA members’ facilities, have secured direct employment with blue-chip companies, while others who started off on their own have grown to become employers of labour.
At the visit of NECA’s delegation led by Segun Oshinowo, the director general of the employers’ body, to Lagos House last week, Governor Ambode declared the readiness of his administration to explore the model in tackling unemployment in Lagos.
Ambode believed that meaningful partnerships with the organised private sector (OPS) would fast-pace the process of taking the youths out of idleness. “We have a situation where we have the resources, but we do not have the institutional framework, and what we have done in the last nine months is to try and find a way to create the institutions and then the framework around it.
“You have come with the whole load of institutional framework. This is a partnership that is made in heaven for the people out there. I want to give an official commitment that we will improve upon this relationship,” he said.
The governor stated that the establishment of the Lagos Employment Trust Fund (ETF) was a demonstration of commitment to issues bothering on youth unemployment, just as he directed the board of the ETF and the Ministry of Wealth Creation to liaise with NECA.
Explaining the overall benefits of keeping the population in employment, Oshinowo said it will go a long way to address issues of insecurity, restiveness among the youths, enhance per capita income of families, boost the level of consumption in the economy and raise revenues accruable to government’s coffers through taxes.
He added that NECA would continue to pay attention to employment generation because it is only income earning citizens that will patronise goods and services offer by NECA member companies. He assured the governor of full commitment to the partnership, adding that NECA will also be willing to take officials of the government on guided tour of some of skill training facilities of member companies.