In its bid to build the capacity of youths towards making them employers of labour, the NNPC Foundation, in partnership with Kudimata Nigeria Limited, a financial education outfit, have trained the Batch C members of the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) in basic financial literacy skills.

The training, which aligned with the objectives of Skills Acquisition and Entrepreneurship Development (SAED) scheme of the NYSC, had its maiden edition featuring Batch B stream in the past months.

So far, over 118,000 youth corps members have been trained in financial literacy, while about 70,000 are being trained across the 37 NYSC orientation camps in the country.

Speaking during the training, the Managing Director, NNPC Foundation, Emmanuella Arukwe, described financial literacy as not only the bedrock of all successes in the ever-competitive labour market, but also a journey towards attaining self-actualisation, thereby heralding the trajectory to sustainable prosperity of the nation.

Arukwe, who implored the corps members to leverage on the knowledge garnered from the training to avert white-collar job syndrome, added that the NNPC Foundation is committed to impacting the youth corps members to become employers of labour.

“We are partnering with both NYSC and Kudimata to bring financial literacy to the corps members, as this will help them make better-informed decisions. We are very passionate about young people and NYSC is a veritable ground as it cuts across 20 to 30 years old youth, thus, making it the right demography,” she stated.

Arukwe said the programme cuts across the 36 states of the country including the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), adding: “This is the first step towards a series of programmes that will culminate in instilling entrepreneurship in the Corps members. After this training, those who pass the examination by 70 per cent will move to the next stage. The next stage will keep them better informed on how to run businesses to ensure success in their businesses.

Thereafter, we will do a pitching where those who are properly trained will be selected and be given start-up kits to go ahead and be on their own.”

Speaking on unemployment as the greatest problem of young graduates, she said: “We are aware of unemployment as a challenge plaguing young graduates and we recognise the need to empower the youths through capacity building of this magnitude for them to empower the whole nation. This training will help reduce unemployment and underemployment in Nigeria, thereby making the corps members employers of labour.”

In her remarks, the FCT Coordinator, NYSC, Shokpeka Winifred, expressed her profound gratitude to both NNPC Foundation and Kudimata Nigeria Ltd for their unwavering support to empower the corps members to enable them to become self-reliant individuals and wealth creators.

Winifred described the training as a platform for young people to learn the best ways of managing their finances, while also grooming them to become good managers of resources.

“Going forward, I’m confident that they will put what they have learnt to use by utilising their funds well as they are now aware of how to earn, maintain and multiply their finances. We are striving to see them becoming business owners tomorrow through further mentorship,” the Coordinator said.

One of the corps members at the NYSC orientation camp in Abuja, Prudence Enema, said: “I’m thrilled that the NNPC Foundation took their time to train us on financial literacy. We are aware that financial literacy is very important and we have learnt a lot on how to multiply our money in order not to suffer in the future.”

Another corps member, Okeke Ugochukwu, revealed that the training was worthwhile as the importance of saving and categorisation of finances were taught effectively.