Displaced persons agitate for vocational skills training

Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) in Yobe on Saturday appealed to the state government to provide them with vocational training and skills acquisition to start a new life.

A cross section of the IDPs made the call in an interview with News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Damaturu.

Musa Bukar, an IDP from Goniri, said the displaced persons had lost their means of livelihood to the insurgency and needed to acquire skills for trades.

“We learnt that the National Directorate of Employment (NDE) in the state had trained over 100 women on various vocational trades to promote self reliance and economic empowerment.

“Government should extend this training to us to enable us acquire skills because, we need this training more to live meaningful and productive lives in our new places of abode,” he said.

Hassan Kime, another IDP said, “We are mostly crop and livestock farmers, with little support and training, we can start new lives as farmers.

Madam Fanta Kachallah, a mother of four, who lost her husband, decried the idle life the IDPs were subjected to and solicited for assistance of public spirited individuals and corporate organisations.

“I will appreciate if I could get assistance to learn a trade and capital to start and to support the education of my children than spending our days begging on the streets.

“Some of us living in the host communities are forced into streets begging.

“This is a distasteful way of life but we have no alternative to supplement the assistance we receive from government and organisations,” she said.

Reacting, Alhaji Iliyasu Ahmed, NDE Coordinator in the state, said NDE trained 100 women on vocational skills in line with the skill acquisition scheme of the small scale enterprises programme recently.

Similarly, it will be recalled that Yobe Government recently resettled some youths, who graduated from the Sani Abacha Skill Acquisition Centre, Kano, with working tools worth N115 million.