No fewer than one hundred youths, women and farmers in Kogi East have been trained on entrepreneurship and business development at the Kogi State College of Education, Ankpa.
The three-day entrepreneurship development training was facilitated by the Deputy Leader of the House of Representatives Rt. Hon Abdullahi Ibrahim Halims in collaboration with the Federal Ministry of Special Duties and Intergovernmental Affairs and was organised by Gozcom Investment Limited.
Speaking at the closing ceremony of the training in Ankpa on Thursday, the lawmaker who was ably represented by Hon Josiah Achimugu said the aim of the programme was to empower the participants most whom were drawn from across the three local government areas of his jurisprudence with knowledge on practical entrepreneurship in order to give them an alternative means of livelihood.
The Deputy House Leader who doubles as member representing Ankpa, Omala and Olamaboro Federal Constituency of Kogi State stressed that the training was meant to make his constituents reduce their dependence on government jobs to ensure their self-reliance.
“I feel there should be a way of building capacity through different entrepreneurship skills so that people can be self reliant. Almost everybody is looking to get a government job but the truth is that the government cannot employ every one.”
During a cross section engagement with some of the beneficiaries to mark the end of the two-day training in which beneficiaries were empowered with start-up grants of fifty thousand naira (N50,000) each, Mr, Muktar Musa acknowledged that “Hon. Abdullahi Ibrahim Halims’ kind of representation is rare. He keeps touching our lives almost every month since his second tenure and we will always pray for him to succeed.”
The Ministry of Special Duties and Intergovernmental Affairs, represented by an official of the ministry, Mr Lapang Michael, said the training is about how those who cannot afford an immediate government job can develop themselves for alternative decent incomes and urged them to take all the lessons learnt very serious in a view to guide them towards a judicious use of their grants as she cautioned them against diverting the grants to other trivial things.
Other delegation of the ministry of Special Duties and Intergovernmental Affairs include Mrs Nwachukwu Chinwe and Mrs Okiji Florence of the Project and Programmes department as well as Mr Godwin Ekere from the ministry’s human resources department.
It is worthy of note that exercise which in serial order, marks the twenty ninth training facilitated by the Deputy House Leader in the last one year underscores his commitment to local economy development in line with President Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s renewed hope agenda which has a special focus on economic diversification, renewable energy development and boosting of Small and medium enterprises to achieve a one trillion dollar economy for Nigeria by the year 2030.
