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Former President Goodluck Jonathan has commended President Muhammadu Buhari for directing the National Agency for Science and Engineering Infrastructure (NASENI) to train 100 Bayelsa youths, and for making economic self-reliance a priority in his government.
The former President said Nigeria’s underdevelopment is tied to the absence of science and technology culture.
Jonathan said this, yesterday, as the special guest of honour at the opening ceremony of NASENI Skill Acquisition Training and Youth Empowerment Programme on modern methods of electrical installation and maintenance, held at Otuoke, his hometown.
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According to him, without investment in agencies like NASENI and other research, as well as tech institutions, economic transformation for Nigeria would be difficult to attain.
The former President said: “Science and technology are the secret of on-going fast developments and advancement in economies of the developed world.”
He urged participants to use the starter packs and equipment given to them at the end of the five-day training to modernise their businesses and not to fall into the temptation of selling them, but use them to pursue their economic development for self-reliance.
In her welcome address, the Overseeing Officer of NASENI, Office of the Executive Vice Chairman, Nonyem Onyechi, said the workshop was the second of its kind in the South South, and part of series of directives from Buhari to the agency, aimed at building capacity of young people so that they could create jobs and move toward self-employment.
Onyechi used the occasion to express the agency’s appreciation to Jonathan for his unwavering support for the agency, while in office, leading to its return from the ministry’s bureaucracy.
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