At least, 21,000 unskilled Nigerians would be engaged under the second phase of the Renewed Hope Employment Initiative (RHEI) by the National Directorate of Employment (NDE).

The Director-General of the Directorate, Silas Agara, disclosed this in Abuja during a one-day strategic implementation of the RHEI second phase meeting involving state coordinators, zonal directors, and top officials of the NDE.

The parley was aimed at finalising modalities and timelines for the commencement of the second phase of the initiative, which is now fully digitalised.

Speaking during the meeting, the Director-General said: “We want to thank the President for the support given to NDE to implement the first phase of the Renewed Hope Employment Initiative, which was launched last year. We had a successful launch and timely completion of the first phase of the programme, which was very successful.”

Agara noted that the success of the programme has erased the initial doubt expressed by some stakeholders about the capacity of the NDE to deliver, given prior experiences.

“A lot of people did not believe we could roll out such a programme and implement it successfully. They were still looking at NDE from the eyes of the previous programmes. But to God be the glory, we have been able to change the narrative and tell Nigerians that good things can come from the present crop of NDE staff we are working with,” he said.

He hinted that the second phase of the training programme would be fully digitalised with minimal human intervention.

Agara disclosed that the meeting was convened to allow for collaborative planning.

“We have invited all our state directors, state coordinators and zonal directors to be here for us to conclude the timelines for launching the second phase of the programme because it is not our intention to load the programme on our state coordinators. We want to collectively agree on timelines and phases of implementing it,” he stated.

The NDE chief also revealed that steps have been taken to ensure that payment of stipends, which posed a challenge in the first phase, is not repeated in the second phase.

“Again, we are here to agree on the nature of payment of stipends due to beneficiaries, because that has been a very big challenge given the platform we used to pay stipends in the first phase. We need to fine-tune those details, so we do not have payment challenges again. If the beneficiaries complain this time, that means we are not doing what we are supposed to do. In the second phase, we do not expect the kind of complaints that came up in the first phase regarding payment issues,” Agara stated.

The DG added that NDE was also prioritising local content and grassroots relevance in its skill training selections, saying: “We are looking at the choice of skill sets on a state-by-state basis so that we consider local content from states that will be implementing those programmes. That is very key in the Renewed Hope Employment Initiative.”