The Executive Vice Chairman of the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), Umar Danbatta has urged Nigerian youths to put to appropriate and legitimate use, the skills and the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) tools acquired in the commission’s nationwide digital literacy training.
Danbatta at the closing ceremony of the NCC’s Digital Literacy Training for the North-West held at the Kano Campus of the Digital Bridge Institute (DBI), particularly enjoined the youths who have had the privilege of participating in the training to apply the skills acquired in gainful activities in order for them to be self-employed.
“The training has provided for you, useful skills, which you have acquired to earn a living for yourself without necessarily relying on government to give you a job. It is our hope at NCC that you will apply the skills appropriately and impact on your friends and associates. I also urge you to resist the temptations to sell the laptops and other IT tools you are going to be provided with,” Danbatta told the participants.
Speaking further, the EVC commended President Muhamamdu Buhari, the supervising Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Isa Pantami and the Governing Board of the Commission for the implementation of the digital capacity-building initiative, describing the scheme as an important intervention approved by the Federal Government to make more Nigerian youths self-reliant.
“We, therefore, express our profound appreciation to the President and to our Ministry for making this particular training, which is a practical demonstration of one of the important pillars of the National Digital Economy Policy and Strategy (NDEPS) 2020-2030, possible,” he pointed out.
The NDEPS aimed at lifting Nigerians, particularly the youths, out of poverty, and Danbatta stressed that the youths required the knowledge to achieve this for self-employment.
It is in view of this that a committee of experts chaired by former EVC of the Commission, Engr. Ernest Ndukwe was set up two years ago to develop modalities and syllabus for the digital training of youths across the six geo-political zones of the country.
According to him, the implementation of the recommendations of the committee of experts, as approved by the government, gave rise to the training, which targets 1,000 Nigerian youths to be digitally trained for self-employment.
The President of DBI, Muhammad Ajiya praised Danbatta for his untiring efforts to ensure the implementation of the Federal Government’s policy and the various modules of the digital, moral and leadership skills given to the youths during the course of the training, which he said will go a long way in making the beneficiaries earn a living and be self-reliant.
The training, a brainchild of the Commission, which was aimed at implementing the Federal Government’s policy to lift Nigerians out of poverty, held for two weeks across each of the six geo-political zones of the country.
Across the zones, the youth were not only trained by subject-matter experts in ICT but were also given laptops, Internet Mi-Fi, financial support and certificates certifying the digital skills they have been equipped with.
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