N-Power is a job creation and empowerment initiative of the Social
Investment Programme of the Federal Government of Nigeria.
N-Power is
designed to help young Nigerians acquire and develop life-long skills to
become solution providers in their communities and to become players in
the domestic and global markets. Through N-Power, young Nigerians will
be empowered with the necessary tools to go on and create, develop,
build, fix and work on exceptional ideas, projects and enterprises that
will change our communities, our economy and our nation. The N-Power
programme is for all eligible Nigerians looking to work gainfully.
However, the initial programmes have been designed for young Nigerians
between the ages of 18 and 35.
THE N-POWER STRATEGY
For
any country, skills and knowledge are the driving forces of economic
growth and social development. Countries with higher and better levels
of skills adjust more effectively to the challenges and opportunities of
the world of work. Despite the great level of unemployment, Nigeria has
the advantage of demographic edge given that a significant proportion
of the population is young. Harnessing the demographic edge through
appropriate skill development efforts would provide an opportunity to
achieve inclusion and productivity within the country. Large-scale skill
development is thus an imminent imperative.
Planned development
of skills must be underpinned by a policy, which is both comprehensive
as well as national in character. A national policy response is,
therefore, needed to guide the skill development strategies and
coordinated action by all stakeholders to avoid a piecemeal approach. It
is also important that the policies of skill development be linked to
policies in the economic, employment and social development arenas. This
is why the Federal Government of Nigeria has designed the N-Power
Programme.
N-Power addresses the challenge of youth unemployment
by providing a structure for large scale and relevant work skills
acquisition and development while linking its core and outcomes to
fixing inadequate public services and stimulating the larger economy.
The modular programmes under N-Power will ensure that each participant
will learn and practice all that is necessary to find or create work.
The N-Power Teacher Corp involves a massive deployment of 500,000
trained graduates who will assist to improve the inadequacies in our
public services in education, health and civic education. Some of these
graduates will also help in actualising Nigeria’s economic and strategic
aspirations of achieving food security and self-sufficiency.
N-Power
will also be a platform for diversifying the economy. N-Power is
preparing young Nigerians for a knowledge economy where, equipped with
world-class skills and certification, they become innovators and movers
in the domestic and global markets. N-Power also focuses on providing
our non-graduates with relevant technical and business skills that
enhance their work outlook and livelihood.
To start, N-Power will
convert the teeming unemployed to a pool of 500,000 empowered teachers,
agriculture extension advisers, healthcare assistants, and civic and
adult education instructors. There will also be a pool of 100,000
software developers, hardware service professionals, animators, graphic
artists, building services professionals, artisans and others. N-Power
will widen to attend to more citizens in the coming months.
GOALS
To intervene and directly improve the livelihood of a critical mass of young unemployed Nigerians.
To develop a qualitative system for the transfer of employability, entrepreneurial and technical skills.
To create an ecosystem of solutions for ailing public services and government diversification policies.
N-POWER HAS 3 MAIN SEGMENTS
N-Power Teacher Corps
N-Power Knowledge
N-Power Build
1.N-Power Teacher Corps
The
N-Power Teacher Corps is a segment of the N-Power initiative which will
engage and train 500,000 young unemployed graduates for the benefit of
rural development in Nigeria. It is a paid volunteering programme of a
2-year duration. Through the N- Power Teacher Corps programme, the
government’s commitment to the improvement of quality of lives,
reduction in income inequality and tackling of the deficiencies in
public services will be actualised.
The graduates will work in
their immediate rural communities, where they will assist in improving
the inadequacies in the education, health, and agriculture sectors.
Among the key selection criteria for the N-Power Teacher Corps will be a
predisposition to work in proximate communities.
The 500,000
graduates under the N-Power Corps programme will get computing devices
that will contain information necessary for their specific engagement,
as well as information for their continuous training and development.
Participants will provide teaching, instructional, and advisory
solutions in 4 key areas.
The N-Power Teacher Corps programme is
an invaluable opportunity for young Nigerians to make immense economic
and social contributions to the nation while developing their skills.
They will be encouraged to think critically, and be entrepreneurial and
creative in applying their skills in their areas of endeavour. The 4
main focus areas are in primary and secondary education, agriculture,
public health and community education (civic and adult education).
N-Power Teach
N-Power
Teach will engage qualified graduates for the benefit of basic
education delivery in Nigeria. They will be deployed as teacher
assistants in primary and secondary schools around Nigeria. They will
not replace the current teachers, but will work as support teachers
across Nigeria, assisting with teaching, school management and other
functions within the schools. They will also assist in taking basic
education to children in marginalised communities.
Importantly,
they will gain work experience, and acquire key competencies through
academic and non-academic capacity building programmes, which will
improve their competitiveness in the workplace.
N-Power Health
Through
the N-Power Health programme, young graduates who form part of the
500,000 N-Power Teacher Corps members will be trained to work as
healthcare assistants. They will teach preventive health to community
members including pregnant women, children, families and individuals.
They will also be trained to provide basic diagnostic services.
Programme participants would be trained to provide the following essential services:
Monitor health status to identify and solve community health problems.
Diagnose and investigate basic health problems and health hazards in individuals and the community.
Inform, educate, and empower people about health issues.
Mobilize community partnerships and action to identify and solve health problems.
Develop policies and plans that support individual and community health efforts.
Educate on laws, regulations and policies that protect health and ensure safety.
Link people to needed personal health services.
N-Power Agro
One
of the ways that the Federal Government plans to diversify our economy
is attaining self-sufficiency in producing the food we consume. An
effective and well-coordinated agriculture extension system is vital to
the attainment of sustainable national food self-sufficiency. To
establish this, the Federal Government will engage 100,000 qualified
young Nigerians through the N Power Agro programme.
After a first
phase of training, N-Power Agro members will start to function as
intermediaries between research and farmers. They will operate as
facilitators and communicators, helping farmers in their decision-making
and ensuring that appropriate knowledge is implemented to obtain the
best results on farms. N-Power Agro will also rely on the use of
technology as the country aspires to identify soil types, farm sizes,
irrigation data, and ensure that our farmers are part of an existing and
developing knowledge management system.
N-Power Community Education
There
are certain values that are vital to building a nation. The Federal
Government will focus on promoting patriotism, integrity, productivity,
ethics, and efficiency. Civic education is essential to sustain our
objectives to build a strong and competitive nation. To achieve this,
the Federal Government will deploy a segment of the N-Power Teacher
Corps as teachers of the civic skills and dispositions required to build
the minds and hearts of our nation.
Some N-Power Teachers Corps
members will also instruct and teach young and mature adults to improve
or supplement their knowledge and skills in literacy, numeracy and other
areas where they may be deficient.
2.N-Power Knowledge
The
N-Power Knowledge programme is the Federal Government’s first step
towards diversifying to a knowledge economy. This programme will work
alongside the planned eight innovation hubs across the country to
provide incubation and acceleration of the technology and creative
industries. The programme is a training to jobs initiative, essentially
ensuring that participants can get engaged in the marketplace in an
outsourcing capacity, as freelancers, as employees and entrepreneurs.
The knowledge programme is segmented into three sub programmes:
N-Power Creative
N-Power Tech (Software)
N-Power Tech (Hardware) N-Power Creative
The
N-Power Creative programme will train and develop 5,000 young creative
talents. The strategy is to put our creative industry on the global
radar as exporters of world-class services and content. The duration for
the training is 3 months, made up of 1 month in-class, and a 2-month
hands-on group project, conducted across selected Nigerian cities. The
participants will be trained and certified in one of the following
courses:
Animation
Graphic Design
Post-production
Script Writing
At
the end of the training, some participants will get local and
international internship opportunities while others will be linked to
job and market opportunities. In addition, all participants receive
computers that assist them in skills acquisition and kick-starting their
journey to work and entrepreneurship.
N-Power Tech (Software)
The
N-Power Tech (Software) programme is set out to train, equip and
support 10,000 young Nigerians to meet the local and international
demand for software developers, web designers and other technology
needs. The training will last for 3 months.
In addition to their technical courses, they will also receive entrepreneurship and business outsourcing trainings.
At
the end of the training, some participants will get local and
international internship opportunities while others will be linked to
job and market opportunities. In addition, all participants receive
computers that assist them in acquiring skills and kick-starting their
journey to work and entrepreneurship.
N-Power Tech (Hardware)
The
N-Power Tech (Hardware) programme is a demand driven skills training
initiative that will train a minimum of 10, 000 young Nigerians to
repair, maintain and assemble mobile phones, tablets, computers and
other devices.
This will be a hands-on training programme where
students will learn with the same tools, components and systems that
they will encounter after the programme. Through this programme we will
not only develop a huge crop of hardware entrepreneurs that can provide
repair and maintenance services, but also train and develop a reservoir
of human capital in hardware assembling and manufacturing for the
domestic and export markets.
3.N-Power Build
The
presence of a well-trained and highly skilled youth population in any
economy has direct impact on entrepreneurship/wealth creation, which in
turn leads to a decline in unemployment. If Nigeria is to fully maximise
the use of her human capital coupled with our abundance of natural
resources, it must pay attention to skills competency development and
entrepreneurial training.
N-Power Build is an accelerated
training and certification (Skills to Job/Enterprise) programme that
will engage and train 75,000 young unemployed Nigerians in order to
build a new crop of skilled and highly competent workforce of
technicians, artisans and service professionals.
The focus industries include:
Building Services
Construction
Built Environment Services
Utilities and Engineering
Hospitality and Catering
Automative
Aluminium and Gas