By Ayodele Oni
Youth unemployment in the country may continue unabated as the various programmes put in place by the Federal Government seem incapacitated to accommodate the teeming unemployed.
The fate of over two million youths that applied for the Nigeria Youth Investment Fund, seems uncertain as their requests did not scale through.
The Federal Ministry of Sports and Youths Development has announced that only 10,000 youths, out of three million that applied for the fund have been shortlisted.
This was contained in a statement issued by the ministry’s Youth Development department in Abuja.
The statement titled, ‘Nigeria Youth Investment Fund: 10,000 Youths shortlisted, await training and disbursement,’ added that the selected youths would be entitled to loans between N250,000 and N3m.
It added that “The Ministry of Youth and Sports Development stated that out of the ongoing screening of over three million applicants for the NYIF loan, 10,000 have been shortlisted for training by the ministry after which they will be approved for specific amounts.
“With the successful completion of this pilot phase, Nigerian Incentive-based Risk Sharing system for Agricultural Lending has cleared names of another 10,000 for training and subsequent loan approval and disbursement. Loans are in the range of N250,000 to N3m for now.”
