The wife of the Ekiti State Governor, Erelu Bisi Fayemi, has lauded the leadership of the Defence and Police Officers’ Wives Association for empowering over 300 unemployed women and youths in the state.
The Acting Director Defence Information, Colonel Onyema Nwachukwu, disclosed this in a statement on Saturday in Abuja.
Nwachukwu said Fayemi gave the commendation at the graduation ceremony of the trainees in the state.
The governor’s wife said that DEPOWA’s initiative to train and empower women and youths in Ekiti would encourage the beneficiaries to become financially independent and self-reliant.
The statement said: “Fayemi urged the trainees to think outside the box in effectively utilising their newly acquired skills and starter packs.
“She also implored the unemployed to build capacity by acquiring vocational skills to enhance self-employment in the face of scarce white-collar jobs.”
The Chief of Defence Staff, General Gabriel Olonisakin, who was represented by the Director Civil Military Cooperation, Air Vice Marshal Abdullahi Kassimu, also commended the leadership of DEPOWA for empowering the graduands.
Olonisakin described the scheme as DEPOWA’s efforts to complement the civil-military relations engagements of the Armed Forces of Nigeria in winning the hearts and minds of the public.
He added that DEPOWA’s humanitarian intervention and empowerment programmes across the nation had added impetus to civil-military relations.
The DEPOWA President, Omobolanle Olonisakin, stated that the empowerment initiative was to imbue the beneficiaries with requisite entrepreneurial skills to enable them contribute meaningfully to the economic prosperity of their communities.
Olonisakin urged the graduands to be agents of change by creating jobs for the teeming unemployed population to alleviate poverty and improve their standard of living.
While congratulating the participants for the successful completion of the training, Olonisakin enjoined them to use the acquired knowledge and the starter packs provided by DEPOWA to expeditiously setup their individual enterprises.
According to her, follow-up evaluation will be conducted on the beneficiaries to appraise their level of compliance in the usage of the starter packs and the progress of their enterprises.
Nwachukwu said that DEPOWA had empowered the beneficiaries with diverse vocational skills in its effort towards supporting government’s job creation and poverty alleviation initiative.
He added that the empowerment programme was in continuation of DEPOWA’s quest in providing gainful employment opportunities to women and youths through vocational skill acquisition.
He said: “Highpoint of the occasion was the presentation of starter packs and certificates to the graduands on the successful completion of two weeks of intensive training in beads stringing, bag fabrication and barbing.
“They were also trained in grinding machine operation, cosmetics and toiletries production, facial make-up and gele tying, fabric tie and tiles installation.”
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