1,077 Ogun Youths Enrolled For Renewed Hope Training

National Directorate of Employment (NDE) has enrolled 1,077 youths from Ogun State in its training under the second phase of the Federal Government’s Renewed Hope Employment Initiative (RHEI) for the year 2025.

RHEI, whose second phase training was flagged off yesterday in Abeokuta, the Ogun State capital, witnessed the convergence of youths drawn from across the state’s 236 wards, participating in an orientation ceremony for the training, which targeted over 40,000 Nigerian youths in different skills across the states of the federation under President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s Renewed Hope Employment Initiative.

Speaking at the event, the NDE Director General, Silas Agara, disclosed that the programme, designed to enhance economic growth, job creation, and poverty alleviation, was part of his Directorate’s strategic plan to align with President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s administration in reducing the country’s unemployment index.

Agara, who was represented by the NDE’s State Coordinator, Mrs. Kehinde Osinowo, said the scheme had successfully trained 32,692 unskilled and unemployed Nigerians in demand-driven skills across the 36 states of the federation and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) since the programme started on December 6, 2024.

Osinowo disclosed that the strategic goals of the initiative were to increase trainee employability, support small-scale enterprises, promote agricultural productivity, improve infrastructure, and provide transient jobs, stressing that over five thousand beneficiaries had been resettled with loans and starter packs.

Emphasising that efforts were ongoing to link other beneficiaries who could not be accommodated under the soft loan scheme to credit-granting institutions, Osinowo reaffirmed the directorate’s readiness to equip the unemployed Nigerians with demand-driven skills to enable them to become labour employers and wealth creators in the future.

Addressing the beneficiaries, the NDE’s Head of Inspectorate, Omoniyi Babatunde, urged participants to be punctual at whichever training centres they are attached to.

In his goodwill remark, Gabriel Emmanuel, representative of the People Living With Disability (PLWD), appealed to the federal government to expand the RHEI to accommodate more of his members in the true spirit of caring for and adequately providing for people with special needs.