By Remy Chukwunyere

There is every reason to thank God for the outgoing year as far as the history of the Imo State Directorate for Employment, Owerri is concerned.

It was really a great year, one filled with new innovations and discussions for sustainable partnerships at various levels and among many critical stakeholders.

My arrival as the new CEO in May 2014 brought a remarkable change in the way programs were run at the agency. In fact, I introduced program ideas that were never thought of by past administrators of the agency.

I had to review the intervention strategies of the agency to align them with the current international trends in youth empowerment, professional skills training and strategic employment generation.

For me, there was an urgent need to launch a campaign to encourage entrepreneurship development among our youths in order to really address the issues of young people depending on the Government and waiting for white collar jobs instead of looking inwards to discover what skills, talents and passions they have to create multi-million Naira jobs for themselves.

I went round speaking in conferences at Abuja, Port Harcourt, Calabar, Enugu and here in Imo State telling young people the need to start building businesses around their passions and with the talents God has already deposited in them.

In the outgoing year, I appeared on NTA, Federal Radio Corporation of Nigeria (FRCN) and severally on Dialogue, a live phone in program of the Imo Broadcasting Corporation (IBC) Orient TV talking about youth empowerment, youth unemployment and job creation.

In one of my presentations at the 2014 Niger Delta YouthLink organized by the Foundation for Partnership Initiatives in the Niger Delta (PIND), I made it abundantly clear to the youths of these days that they are lazy. For me, the unemployment crisis in the country has remained unabated because of the laziness among our youths. Worse is their craze for quick money powered by those who made their money over night from rituals and fraudulent means.

I have repositioned the Imo State Directorate for Employment, Owerri to be able to tackle these hydra headed issues headlong as we resume in 2015.

With my contacts, I have initiated partnership discussions with private sector companies and organizations ranging from oil companies, NGOs, financial institutions, etc which have accepted to partner with us in the implementation of our various youth empowerment programs as we resume for business in 2015.

In 2015, we expect to implement a number of impact-making projects and permit me to mention a few of them as follows:

• Imo Jobs Online: This particular project when launched has the potential to create additional 25,000 direct jobs in the private sector over the next four years alongside the 25,000 jobs already created by His Excellency, Owelle Rochas Okorocha, under the Imo Youth Must Work Program. It will be an online job board and unemployment database run by the Imo State Government, the first of its kind in the country.

• Imo Entrepreneurship Summit: This project is designed to celebrate successful Innovators and Entrepreneurs of Imo State origin and to showcase to Imo youths how these great men and women made it to the top, the challenges they face along the way and how they finally overcame. This will be done via special panel discussions featuring His Excellency, Owelle Rochas Okorocha, the Executive Governor of Imo State; Mr. Frank Nneji, the MD/CEO of ABC Transport Company PLC; Chief Leostan Ekeh, the MD/CEO of Zinox Technologies Ltd; among others.

• Entrepreneurship Development Center: This is a project funded by the Central Bank of Nigeria for the various geopolitical zones. I have concluded plans for the Southeast center to be established in Imo State. The benefits of having this center in Imo Sate are inestimable as it will produce several entrepreneurs as well as create several thousands of indirect jobs for Imo youths in the private sector.

•  Graduate Enterprise Challenge: This project intends to replicate the Federal Government’s Youths with Innovation (YOUWIN) program at the State level. Here, we are going to award seed grants to youths with high innovative business ideas as well as provide them mentoring until their businesses are incubated and matured.

• Entrepreneurship Training in Agribusinesses: With the support of the Nigerian Agip Oil Company (NAOC), we shall equip youths from the oil producing communities of Ohaji/Egbema and Oguta Local Government Areas of Imo State with skills in various agribusinesses, such as in cassava value chains, horticultural crops production, aquaculture, etc.

• Professional Skills Training: In 2015, we shall expand the scope of our skills training programs for young people, which I introduced in 2014. In the coming year, we shall launch training programs in website development and blogging, graphic designs, computer maintenance and networking, fashion and shoe designing, paint making, etc. Several partners and sponsors have already been identified for these projects.

At this juncture, may I use this opportunity once again to express my profound gratitude to His Excellency, Owelle Rochas Okorocha, the Executive Governor of Imo State, for giving me the platform to express my capabilities, which are evident in these achievements mentioned above. If it were not for the Governor, these opportunities may not have opened up for Imo youths. Your Excellency, I thank you so much and pray that your return as the Imo State Governor will not be truncated during the 2015 general elections.

For all the organizations that have accepted to partner with us in changing the lives of Imo people, the likes of Foundation for Partnership Initiatives in the Niger Delta (PIND); Nigerian Agip Oil Company (NAOC); African Community Bridge Foundation; ABC Transport Company PLC; Zenith Computer Technologies; South Saharan Social Development Organization (SSDO), etc we thank you all.

As far as I am concerned, this is just the beginning of better things to come at the Imo State Directorate for Employment, Owerri.

Signed:

HON. REMY CHIDI CHUKWUNYERE,

Director General

– Remy Chukwunyere is the Director General of the Imo state Directorate for employment