The National Directorate of Employment (NDE) has announced its plan to engage at least 21,000 unskilled Nigerians in the second phase of the Renewed Hope Employment Initiative (RHEI).
Director general of the Directorate, Silas Agara, disclosed this in Abuja on Thursday during a one-day strategic implementation of RHEI second phase meeting involving all state coordinators, zonal directors, and top officials of the NDE.
The initiative is part of the broader agenda of the President Bola Tinubu’s administration, which aims to tackle unemployment and drive economic growth. The first phase targeted over 90,000 unemployed Nigerians across the States of the Federation.
Our correspondent reports that Thursday’s meeting focused on finalising modalities and timelines for the commencement of the second phase of the initiative.
Speaking to journalists at the sideline of the meeting, the DG said; “We want to thank Mr. 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 a timely completion of the first phase of the program, which was very successful.”
Agara explained that many had initially doubted the capacity of the NDE to successfully implement the programme, given past experiences of job creation initiatives.
“A lot of people didn’t believe we were able to roll out such a program and implement it successfully. They were still looking at NDE from the eyes of the previous programs. But to God be the glory, we’ve been able to change the narrative and tell Nigerians that good things can come from the present crop of NDE staff that we’re working with,” he said.
According to him, the second phase of the Renewed Hope Employment Initiative is taking a step forward by adopting a 100 per cent digital approach.
He explained that the meeting was convened to allow for collaborative planning.
He said, “We’ve invited all our state directors, state coordinators, zonal directors, to be here for us to conclude on the timelines for launching the second phase of the program, because it’s not our intention to load the program on our state coordinators. We want to collectively agree on timelines and phases of implementing the programme.”
The director general also noted that some of the challenges experienced in the first phase which include delay in payment of stipends, is also being re-evaluated.
“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. We need to fine-tune those details so we don’t have challenges with our beneficiaries,” Agara stated.
The DG added that NDE is also prioritising local content and grassroots relevance in its skill training selections.
“We’re looking at the choice of skill sets on a state basis so that we take local content into consideration from states that will be implementing those programs. That is very key in the Renewed Hope Employment Initiative,” he said.
