21,000 unemployed Bayelsa indigenes to benefit from CBN/World Bank scheme

A Non-Governmental Organisation, Visioned Skills Development Center (VSDC), has announced that over 21,000 unemployed youths from Bayelsa State will benefit from special grants from the World Bank/Central Bank scheme to reduce unemployment and promote entrepreneurial skills.

The Chief Executive Officer of VSDC, Apostle Isreal Kama, who made this known in Yenagoa during the interactive session with shortlisted beneficiaries at a seminar organised by the VSDC in conjunction with the Social Exchange Market, said the special grant will be sourced through the Social Exchange Market under the supervision of VSDC, for the implementation of the ‘bottom-up’ strategy of the World Bank project.

Kama said beneficiaries of the scheme could get grants as high as N10 million to start small businesses that would be supervised by VSDC all year round for sustainability.

Speaking to newsmen after the seminar, Kama, said the “grants all over the world are always needed for a particular purpose to advance human development. The purpose of this particular grant available in Nigeria now is for economic revolution.

“Ordinary Nigerian must be given the opportunity to offer solution to one challenge or another in order to drive our economy forward. Life everywhere is full of challenges. Various solutions to challenges of life generate.

“But huge percentage of ordinary Nigerians does not have what it takes to access capital either for business start up or business standardization thereby relying on Government for source of employment.

The economies of advanced nations are driven by people not government.

“Government only makes favourable policies that enable people to do such driving and that is what the government of Nigeria has done by the establishment of Development Bank of Nigeria to create diverse opportunities for ordinary Nigerians to participate in economic diversification”.