Ondo senator charges youth to embrace ICT to fight unemployment

The Senator representing Ondo Central in the National Assembly, Senator Tayo Alasoadura, has said youths in the country have failed to fully embrace and take advantage of the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) revolution.

The lawmaker who stated this in Akure,  Ondo state capital, while addressing participants in an ICT training programme sponsored by him in conjunction with BUGOTAKE Technology, said that the ICT revolution had no barrier of frontiers and can help the youth out of the unemployment market.

He noted that Nigeria has already plunged into the ICT ecosystem but failed to harvest the dividends of the ICT revolution sweeping across the globe.

Alasoadura said he decided to train some 200 graduates from six local government areas of the Central senatorial district to expose them to the ICT world and to take them out of their unemployment market

He explained that the skills the young graduates are exposed to include CCTV, GPS tracking, PBX (Intercom), OBD (automobile scanning), IP/CLOUD (remote viewing) and Contract Proposal Writing.

He said “Youth unemployment has been an issue that always troubles my mind, and I have come to realize that there is a need for new thinking and orientation to defeat the monster.

“Given the reality of things in our country today, the greatest empowerment one can get is practical trainings and skills that are relevant to the needs of our people,”

The senator noted that ICT had a critical role to play in efforts to diversify the country’s economy, saying he sponsored the training as a demonstration of his strong belief in using ICT as a major driver of development.

He said: “ICT is strategic to all sectors of the economy in terms of productivity and efficiency. There is no sector that has not leveraged on ICT to increase efficiency and performance.

“This is what explains my desire to bankroll this training programme with the prime purpose of lifting our youths out of unemployment and poverty.

“The training is free of charge and participants who excel will get automatic employment.

“It is, therefore, my hope that those who are lucky to participate in the training will take full advantage of it and make something meaningful out of their lives