FG'S GRADUATE TEACHERS' JOBS: 403,528 register in 36 hours

The worrisome unem­ployment situation in Nigeria again came to the fore on Sunday and yesterday as job seekers invaded the Federal Govern­ment’s website portal for the graduate teachers’ jobs scheme.

Within the first 36 hours of the launch of the jobs’ website to recruit the promised 500,000 graduate teachers, 403,528 ap­plicants successfully registered for the scheme.

The portal (N-Power.gov.ng), which was opened on Sun­day, is operated by the Job Cre­ation Unit in the Presidency.

The number of applicants who have successfully regis­tered for the programme was disclosed by the Acting Presi­dent, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo.

In a statement on Mon­day, the Acting President’s Of­fice said:

“We have been very impressed by the enthusiastic response to the call for applications. As at noon on Monday, June 13, only 36 hours after the launch of the portal, 403,528 applicants had successfully registered on the site and were in the middle of completing the application process.

“We are also very pleased that the registrations have been taking place without hitches or system failures, considering the volume of response,” the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Job Creation, Mr. Afolabi Imoukhede, said.

Altogether, the website has received over 35 million hits since Saturday midnight, he added.

The Jobs Scheme, known as ‘N-Power’, is one of the five ini­tiatives of the Social Investment Programme of the Federal Gov­ernment, described by Presi­dent Muhammadu Buhari in his Democracy Day Speech as “by far the most ambitious so­cial protection programme in our history.”

A total sum of N500 billion has been provided for the pro­gramme in the 2016 Budget, a milestone in Nigeria’s budget history.

N-Power is designed to help young Nigerians acquire and develop skills to become so­lution providers in their com­munities and to become play­ers in the domestic and global market.

It will provide employment opportunities for 500,000 grad­uates as teachers, agriculture extension advisers, healthcare assistants, and civic and adult education instructors in com­munities across Nigeria.

There will also be a pool of 100,000 software developers, hardware service profession­als, animators, graphic artists, building services professionals, artisans and others.