Kukah Foundation partners Spaniards to train youths in Northern Nigeria

The Kukah Centre has begun a digital leadership training programme, specifically targeted at vulnerable youths in the 19 Northern states of the country.

The programme, according to the Director of the Kukah Centre, Dr. Arthur Martins, has the blessing of the Catholic Pontiff, Pope Francis in conjunction with Spanish Entrepreneur.

Martins, who spoke with State House correspondents after a closed door with Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, noted that Nigeria has a large number of academically qualified youths but lacked the ethical orientation to make them become great leaders.

He said: “We came here to present to the Vice President the Kukah Centre Leadership interns for 2017. We had planned to do this last December but his schedule was fully booked.

“It is an idea to provide a platform for promising young men and women an idea to learn and develop professionally. First to develop their professional competence in certain platform so that they can actually carry out issues around leadership they have manifested in various ways.

“But much more importantly, we are not just talking about the professional competence; we are also talking about ethical leadership.

“Nigeria’s challenge has never been about academic, we have some people who are very well educated.

“It is just that sometimes our leaders and people are ethically challenged and the idea of this project is to provide these young people platforms to be able to grow professionally but much more importantly to emerge as ethically sound leaders to drive the transformation of this country.”

On whether the training will involve Almajiri children, he said, “what we are working on in Kukah Centre in partnership with Spanish Foundation, Profofiro is to provide digital education in North.

“It is a pilot project we have started right now. The idea is to be able with the support of the Spanish Foundation, Profofiro to kind of provide some basic digital tools in schools.

“It emerged in the process of a conversation between Pope Francis and the Spanish Entrepreneur, the man who founded telephonic in Spain. He told the people that he wanted to help the Pope Foundation.

“The people told him that if there was something that worries him all over the world, they are the issues of vulnerable children who had no education and are in the streets.

“Whether they are Christians or Muslims, Hindu and the rest of them, if he can channel that money into that project, which will be great. And that is what he did. He started in places like Angola, Latin America and came into Nigeria early last year and we are in the pilot phase of that project.

“Basically, the idea is to be able to help the most vulnerable and the rest of them gain at least basic education.

“It was a partnership between the Northern Governors Forum, the Catholic Bishops Conference and the Kukah’s Centre as the implementing agency in Nigeria.