NECA introduces platform to tackle youth unemployment 

The Nigeria Employers’ Consultative Association (NECA) has introduced an online solution initiative tagged, ‘NECApreneur’ to tackle youth unemployment in the country.NECA explained that the initiative is aimed at providing an easy-to-access opportunity for the teeming Nigerian youths to upscale and upgrade their skills in entrepreneurship and business planning. 

The national umbrella body of employers in Nigeria said the programme is part of its Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) aimed to bring its expertise and high profile network to work with government in equipping youths ahead to embrace entrepreneurship.

At a training organised by the association over the weekend in Lagos, the Director-General, NECA, Olusegun Oshinowo, urged youths to take their destiny in their hands and embrace entrepreneurship as veritable employment option. He advised them to position themselves and take advantage of business opportunities without being discouraged by the current situation of the country, noting that the prospects and potential for the economy is quite great.

“With NECApreneur, we will empower and inspire them by ways they can turn their business ideas into profitable businesses, connect and link them with our high profile network he assured the audience that they will get the best out from the initiative.

“The whole idea is to create a clime where we can get our undergraduates before they leave the university and for graduates to embrace entrepreneurship, a situation where unemployment has reached the roof top, we demand a new approach” Oshinowo said.

The Project Manager, NECApreneur, Peter Aire, who took the audience through the rudiments of the two months training, which runs in three stages, described the NECApreneur online as a one-stop-shop where all the resources that a young entrepreneur requires to succeed are encapsulated. 

According to Aire, “we recruit on that platform, train and provide them with relationships that they require to make success of their entrepreneurships. The requirements by NECApreneur include internship, support and funding.”

The programme which witnessed heads from the entrepreneurship departments from universities and other organisations where they all spoke at length on how they have gone beyond the National University Commission (NUC) curriculum to inculcate entrepreneur as a course of study and how they have groomed their students to become prospective entrepreneurs.