Youthville by Daily Trust Tambari

YOUTHVILLE TRUST

ISSUE #79

...young at heart

Friday, May 20, 2016

Creating

JOBS is easier than seeking for jobs —25yr-old Youthpreneur

‘When I started I didn’t know I could accomplish this much’ By Latifat Opoola @LatifatOpoola

feyinwa Okonkwo is one of very rare woman you would find in Banex Plaza selling and repairing GSM phones and accessories. And since sales and GSM repairs are known to be male dominated fields, Youthville was anxious to ask her about her experiences and work ethics. The young student of Agricultural Economics from University of Abuja said she joined the trade about eight years ago when she needed a steady source of income to sustain herself and her siblings considering she wasn’t born with silver spoon. “I needed to find something doing, I didn’t want to remain idle and I wanted to become responsible for myself and my family, so I decided to learn how to

CBN pledges to support youth council in Agriculture

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repair GSM phones” she said. Ify, as popularly called by her customers, said because she is schooled in physics, the job was easy for her to learn. She recalled that she was the only lady at the time learning amongst several men. This made her boss to give her all the necessary support she needed. The young entrepreneur who boasts of saving roughly 4000 naira daily admits that the job is a very lucrative one as long as the operator is very diligent in his work. She laments that Nigeria has not really progressed in innovations and confesses she uses the internet to educate herself more and improve on her skills. She also complains that getting spare parts of certain phone models is really difficult to come in Nigeria and this makes her work

stall sometimes. She therefore advises youths to empower themselves in whatever trade they feel passionate about and called on customers to have much patience stressing that some won’t give the operators enough time to detect the faults of their device before harassing them to give them back their phones. “Some customers will not give you enough time to assess where the fault is before asking you to return the phones, making it look like we don’t know our work” she said. I will advise youths “Get something of your own going and not depend on white collar jobs. I can testify that being your own boss pays because when I started I didn’t know I could accomplish this much but here I am today and glory be to God”

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YOUTHVILLE

Friday, May 20, 2016 Page 34

Creating jobs is easier than seeking for jobs —25yr-old Youthpreneur Abdullahi Maida is the founder and managing director of Planet Futsal limited, a football and fitness centre in Abuja. In this interview, he talks on the motivating factor behind establishing the centre, penchant for self-employment and challenges of running the first-of-its kind facility in Abuja. Text by Ibrahim Kabiru Sule @ikabirsule

ow long have you been in operation? We started light operation in 2013. It has been work in progress. We started with three pitches, 5-aside pitches. During my time studying in England, whenever we needed to play football there are a lot of places like this that you go and pay and then play. That is where I got the concept. We have expanded from three 5-aside pitches to four pitches to include a 7-aside. And we are hoping to open up a fitness centre, a gym before the end of August this year.

What are the services you render? We offer two main services. One of the services we call it pitch hire.

You come in as a team, or a school team, football team or even a group of friends and hire pitch on an hourly basis. And we have different rates for the day time and night time. We operate even at night. And then the other service we call daily pick up. As an individual you want to play football and you don’t have other people to play with, you just show up at a particular time, which is 4:30pm and then 8:30 at night. You pay a token, join other people and play. Are you affiliated with either the sport ministry or the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF). We don’t have any affiliations but one of our consistent customers has been Samson Siasia. He has an academy and on Saturdays they come here to play.

Would you say it was a capital intensive project? Actually it is capital intensive. You know how construction in Abuja is. Some of the things we needed we had to import them. For example the grass we had to buy it from Dubai and bring it here. And it is not a short term project. It is actually a long term one. So we don’t expect a pay back until the next five to six years. That is when we expect it will really start to bring in money. What is your staff strength? We currently have seven staff. Out of the 8 staff, which includes, Myself, four security staff, one cleaner and our manager, a customer service assistant, and we also provide employment to others because we outsource our gardening and landscaping. Without doubt we look forward to employing

Backpack

Again ‘Education for HIV/AIDS: 470 million change’ adopts book as gate fee for event people tested Text by Victoria Bamas such about 6.6 million people are receiving @Bamasvictoria

e a l t h c a r e Foundation (AHF) and the Coalition of Fund the Fund Campaign has said that over 470 million people have been tested for HIV as result of global fund supported program as such called on the government to put stringent mechanism to ensure donors funds are efficiently utilized. They made the statement during a press conference in Abuja urging donors from high income Countries like Japan, China and Germany to up their contributions at the 5th forthcoming Global Fund Replenishment round. They said that the Global fund to fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria (GFATM) has saved millions of lives as

lifesaving antiretroviral therapy for HIV and 16 million people with HIVTB co-infections have been treated. Adetayo Tololawi, AHF Country program manager, while fielding questions from the press said the “The essence of this meeting is to encourage high incoming countries to come together during the replenishment meeting to make pledges and redeem their pledges to global fund. ”He explained that the impact of global fund on the world’s three most deadly diseases HIV, Tuberculosis and Malaria cannot be overstated because in the long run the treatment and prevention is to eradicate HIV, Tuberculosis and possibly malaria.

Text by Victoria Bamas @Bamasvictoria

non-governmental organization ‘Education for Change’ is set to host ‘A Book for Change’ (ABC) Campaign that seeks to empower young people in rural communities through literacy. The lead organizer of the campaign Owoicho Apochi Nelson speaking to YOUTHVILLE said the “annual literacy and awareness campaign is focused on empowering young people in the rural areas through literacy.” He explained that in 2015, Education for Change set up a community library in Adoka, with more than one thousand books and accessible to more than 1,500 students’ teachers and members of the community. He however stated that “This year the goal is to set up ten reading hubs at different locations in Benue state.” Mr. Edwin Ikuoria, the country representative of ONE Campaign and Mrs. Hembadoom Orkeghen the Executive Director of Benue state Mass Education Commission are expected to speak at the event which is set to take place on the 27th of May in Makurdi, Benue state. Nelson added that Education for Change will officially launch “Every Child Needs Education” a campaign song featuring many artistes passionate about literacy. The gate fee to the event is a book donation, collected books will be use to set up libraries in various communities.

more, especially when our fitness centre is ready. What are the challenges? We face several challenges. For instance, the recurrent fuel scarcity and the fact that some people are getting laid off from their duties, we have seen a reduction in the number of people that come, because they are either spending time on the fuel queues or buying black markets and then they might not have enough money to come and spend for exercises. We also have an environmental problem because we have a river that passes through and during rainy season it carries a lot of debris from other places which causes erosion and damages to our banks. It was also challenging getting permits and we have to source for finance.

CBN pledges to support youth council in Agriculture Text from Romoke W. Ahmad, Ilorin

he Central Bank of Nigeria(CBN) has said that it would support members of the National Youth Council of Nigeria (NYCN) on agriculture ventures. The branch Comptroller of CBN in Ilorin, Mr. Ekanem Akpan said this during the Council courtesy visit to the apex bank. Akpan said CBN is always ready to sensitize any individual or organisations on empowerment stressing that his staff who are in charge of agriculture would enlighten them further. The CBN officer incharge of Agriculture Mr. Shiaka O Dirisu informed the Council delegation that many Nigerian youths do waste their time seeking white collar jobs for five to ten years after their graduation while they could earn not less than N50,000 per week on agriculture venture. Dirisu who suggested that the Council should identify type of farming and production it will adopt for

members said few youths who had taken to poultry, vegetable farming, cereals production have become multi -millionaire without been civil servants. He noted that there was need for them to also partner with federal and state government agencies such as ARMTI, NCAN, Kwara State University(KWASU) on their various youth programmes. He added that the CBN would be available to lecture NYCN members on any selected product of agriculture and guide them towards self reliance. Earlier, the Chairman of NYCN, Comrade Kazeem Adekanye informed the Comptroller that the council had partnered with Agriculture Academy to train 160 youth farmers. Adekanye said the council realised that there were many opportunities in agriculture sector that Nigerian youth could utilise without fear of holding hoes and cutlass.

“Reflect upon your present blessings of which every man has many not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some.” - Charles Dickens