FG commences recruitment of 500,000 teachers- Prof. Yemi Osinbajo

In what is the first of the roll-out of its N500 billion social investment programmes, the Buhari presidency will start taking applications online for positions in the 500,000 direct teacher jobs scheme. This was announced on Wednesday by the Office of the Vice President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo (SAN).

The application will be through an internet portal: npower.gov.ng. While the portal would be live on June 11, applications are expected to start coming in on June 12, the beginning of next week. Young unemployed Nigerians are advised to visit the website and apply.

It would be recalled that President Muhammadu Buhari in his May 29 Democracy Day broadcast to the nation formally launched the unprecedented social investment programmes already provided for in the 2016 Appropriation by the administration.

The 500,000 Teacher Corps, nicknamed N-Power Teach on the portal, is one of the three direct job creation and training schemes Nigerians can start applying for from June 12.

Others are N-Power Knowledge, which will train 25,000 Nigerians in the area of technology, and N-Power Build fir the training of another 75,000 in the areas of building services, construction, utilities, hospitality and catering, automotive vocations, aluminium and gas services.

All trainees would be paid for the duration of their training. The N-Power Teacher Corps initiative, which will engage and train 500,000 young unemployed graduates, is a paid volunteer programme of two-year duration. Unemployed Nigerians selected and trained will play teaching, instructional and advisory roles in primary and secondary schools, agricultural extension systems across the country, public health and community education-covering civic and adult education.

Besides their monthly take home pay estimated at about N23, 000, the selected 500,000 graduates will also get computer devices that will contain information necessary for their specific engagement, as well as information for their continuous training and development.

They get to keep the devices even after exiting from the programme. According to the plan of the Buhari administration, the N-Power Teacher Corps programme is an invaluable opportunity for young Nigerians to make immense economic and social contributions to the nation while developing their skills.

It will also help to address the problems of inadequate teachers in public schools.

Also, persons enlisted under the scheme will gain work experience and acquire key competencies through academic and non-academic capacity building programmes intended to improve their competitiveness in the workplace. Their devices will come loaded with knowledge-oriented applications and software that will enable them acquire the skills and capacity. Under the N-Power Knowledge scheme, there are three aspects: Creative, Technology Software and Hardware. These three sub-divisions would will train 25,000 young Nigerians in all.

Five thousand of them would be trained in Animation, Graphic Design, Post-Production, Script-Writing. All of those under the sub-division of N-Power Knowledge-creative category. The N-Power Knowledge scheme also has a technology category in two aspects: hardware and software. Ten thousand Nigerians would be trained and equipped in the area of software development, including web designers, and another 10,000 in hardware expertise including to repair, maintain and assemble mobile phones, tablets, computers and other devices.

Also the N-Power Build category was designed realizing that the presence of a well-trained and highly skilled youth population in any economy has direct impact on entrepreneurship/wealth creation, which in turn leads to a decline in unemployment.

N-Power Build is therefore an accelerated training and certification (Skills to Job/Enterprise) programme that will engage and train 75,000 young unemployed Nigerians in order to build a new crop of skilled and highly competent workforce of technicians, artisans and service professionals.

The other schemes in the Buhari presidency Social Investment Programmes, which would soon be rolled out in the coming weeks, include the Conditional Cash Transfer that pays N5,000 monthly to one million Nigerians, the Micro-Credit Scheme for more than 1.5 million Nigerians, the Home Grown School Feeding programme that will serve 5.5 million Nigerian pupils in primary school a free hot meal per day this year and the Education support grant programme for 100,000 tertiary students in Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics and education.

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