Bauchi State Assembly Committee on Poverty Alleviation calls the engagement of youths and women in enterpreneurship to check restiveness.

By Rabiu Ishaq Muhammad.

Bauchi State House of Assembly committee on Cooperatives and Poverty Alleviation, has called for spirited efforts to get youths and women engaged, to check restiveness and criminality across the state.

The chairman of the committee, Alhaji Ahmed Abdullahi, made the call in an exclusive interview on the outcome of the oversight visit conducted to skills acquisition training centres by the committee to all the twenty local government areas of the state.

He reaffirmed the legislature’s commitment to supporting the state government, stressing that oversight visits to the local councils would form part of the partnership between the legislature and the executive, to deliver on poverty alleviation.

Alhaji Ahmed Abdullahi disclosed that getting the youths engaged was in line with the present administration’s commitment to making the youths job creators through the different youth’s employment and wealth creation programmes.

He added that equipping individuals with practical skills for both the formal and informal sectors, will enable them to start businesses, improve their social standing and gain confidence for a better future.

The chairman of the committee hinted that, skills acquisition training program, has helped to reduce unemployment, poverty and crime in societies, hence the need for governments at all levels to revive skills acquisition and women centres across the state.

He added that the committee in compiling its report, will recommend that apprenticeship be integrated into the formal school system, for graduating secondary school, students or trainees to acquire basic skills in their chosen vocations.

Alhaji Ahmed Abdullahi also recommended increased awareness programmes through the media, for the rural people, on the imperatives of vocational skills acquisition as a means to shore up their economic potentials and contribute to state and national development.