Against the backdrop of the current rate of unemployed youth in the country, the Federal Institute of Industrial Research (FIIRO), Oshodi has organised a three-day development training to empower the Lagos State Chapter of Ubulu –Uku Youth Association, Delta State.

The training, which was dubbed the “Techno Entrepreneurship Development Training”, started within the premises of FIIRO on Monday, 18th January and is set to end on Wednesday, 20th January 2016.

According to the Director General, FIIRO, Dr. Gloria Elemo, the training was geared towards empowering the youth to be employers of labour, instead of waiting endlessly for the nonexistent white collar jobs.

In her welcome address, she said, “it has always being my joy to see youths taking up positions of leaderships either in the private or public sector, through the new thinking and paradigm shift of self-employment.”

Elemo said, though “your times are tough, but for every dark cloud, there is a silver lining, and that is why the “Federal Government through its agencies like FIIRO is tackling the issue of unemployment with all her vigor especially through entrepreneurship with ultimate aim of building youths who are job creators and not job seekers.”

She further said, “to ensure this, the institute has identified the relevance of over 250 technologies it has developed in all the 774 Local Government Areas in Nigeria and has documented and published them in a book to assist in fighting the war against unemployment.

“Many youths have benefited from this programme and have set up profitable business ventures based on technologies they acquired at FIIRO,” she noted.

According to her, the three days development training was also to commemorate the 10th memorial anniversary of her late mother, Mrs. Grace Egun.

Speaking with the Secretary of the Ubulu- Uku Youth Association, Madam Margaret Ngozi, she said the association’s major mandate is to campaign for youth empowerment, therefore the group is happy to receive such empowerment training from FIIRO. “I see this platform as a way to give hope to the youth, she added.”

Asked if they paid for the training, she said, “we did not pay anything for this training, it is fully sponsored by FIIRO and our Coordinators.”

Ngozi explained; “looking at the economy, one needs to be on a safe side by empowering one’s self to be self-independent, and
acquiring this knowledge is never a waste.”

She noted that the DG, FIIRO, has advised them to form a cooperative within the association to make it easier to access loans from banks to support their diverse business ventures.

We are being trained on five technologies within these three days, and these are smoked fish, fruit juice, high quality cassava flour, instant pounded yam flour and bread and confectionaries baking and I am sure everyone will have a particular one to pursue as I have picked the technology of various methods of fish smoking and its packaging, she explained.

Another member of the association, Jude Mekwuye while commending FIIRO said, based on the current economic problem, I see this training as a plan B to help me develop myself as well as transfer the knowledge to others, this will help grow the Small and Medium Scale Enterprise (SMEs), in the country.

Mekwuye said, the statistics of unemployed youth in the country is scary that one does not have to depend solely on their school certificates.

He however urged government to make it mandatory for Corps Members to acquire a skill or the other before their service year runs out, as this will afford them opportunities of establishing little by little after service, instead of staying unemployed.
The FIIRO boss, encouraged the Ubulu –Uku youth to take the training with all seriousness, as it was considered a golden opportunity.