Chairman, Subsidy Reinvestment and Employment Programme, Dr. Christopher Kolade, on Wednesday in Ado-Ekiti, the Ekiti State capital, expressed worries over the high rate of unemployment in the land.
Kolade said no fewer than 40 million Nigerians were unemployed.
He spoke through the Technical Assistant to Community Services, Women and Youth Employment, SURE-P, Emeka Ekpunobi, during the one-day stakeholders sensitisation programme on Graduate Internship Scheme, by SURE-P in collaboration with Kalends Consulting.
He said the SURE-P was a platform through which the Federal Government planned to reduce unemployment.
He said, "Issue of job creation is a very critical one which over the years posed a challenge to governments at different levels.
"It was in recognition of this that President Goodluck Jonathan mandated SURE-P to marshal out intervention programmes to address this challenge.
"Through the GIS, we have the mandate to create 50,000 jobs. This sensitisation workshop is very important to us because it is part of our commitment to ensure that the GIS achieves the objectives for which it was set up.
"One of the objectives is to make most Nigerians graduates employable through training and mentoring."
He confirmed the view of the Project Director of GIS, Mr. Peter Parka, that 40million Nigerians required employment.
Parka had said, "National Bureau of Statistics in 2011 indicate that 23.9per cent of Nigerians are unemployed. This means that about 40million Nigerians need employment.
"Government is concerned about this high unemployment rate and is doing everything possible to reverse it. The challenge of graduate unemployment is inability to absorb the nearly 300,000 graduates churned out by our tertiary institutions each year."
Punch
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