World Bank Earmarks $300 Million To Support Youth Empowerment In Nigeria

Posted by African Examiner Latest Headlines, News Friday, April 25th, 2014

The World Bank has earmarked a $300 million to support youths empowerment intervention in Nigeria under the bank’s Youth Empowerment Social Support Operation (YESSO)

The World Bank Task Team Leader for YESSO, Professor Foluso Okunmadewa disclosed this at the Training the Trainers Programme on Community Based Targeting and Unified Registry of Beneficiaries of the scheme for participants from Osun, Ekiti and Oyo states.

The three states are among the seven pilot states for the scheme, which include Bauchi, Cross River, Kwara and Niger states.

YESSO is a Federal Government’s World Bank-supported intervention on poverty reduction targeted at the extremely poor in Nigeria to access increased opportunity for youth employment and social service delivery.

Okunmadewa said the training by the World Bank would help the pilot states to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of their various youths empowerment schemes.

“The main focus is to train on how to do community-based targetting and how to create a single register for beneficiaries of each states so that the targets, who are poor people can be captured in the programme”, he said.

Speaking, the Senior Special Assistant to the Governor of the State of Osun on Community Forum, Olatunbosun Oyintiloye said the YESSO, just like OYES, would go a long way in reducing unemployment rate and poverty in the country.

Expressing satisfaction that the World Bank and the Federal Government are keying into the idea of OYES, Oyintiloye said the OYES scheme alone has taken off 40,000 youths off the streets within the last three years.

He averred that through the OYES alone, Osun is injecting N200 million into the local economy, which, he said has further boosted the state economy.

He then counselled government at all levels to key into the culture of reducing the rate of unemployment across the country.

Also, the State Operation Coordinator of YESSO, Mr Femi Ifaturoti, said the interest of the World Bank is to develop the capacities and expand the youth empowerment intervention programmes in Osun and other pilot states, so that it can be replicated in other states of Nigeria.

The main focus of the training, he said, was to create community-based targetting and create registers for the beneficiaries, so that whenever such registers are needed for anything, it would be available.