Geidam Poly equips vulnerable youth with life skills training – Rector

What are the reasons for the establishment of the centre? This centre was established three years back to train our students in the host community or anyone in need of training on entrepreneurial skills and help them establish their own businesses. If you look carefully, we have 11 potent sections that are designed to provide […]

What are the reasons for the establishment of the centre?

This centre was established three years back to train our students in the host community or anyone in need of training on entrepreneurial skills and help them establish their own businesses. If you look carefully, we have 11 potent sections that are designed to provide various training to vulnerable youths in this community. 

So, the centre is made to provide skills in two ways; it’s mandatory for our students to learn the trade, and to synergize with stakeholders and give training to the host community.

Normally when a student gets admission into this institution, he must learn at least one trade, so that he would be an entrepreneur himself. 

The centre has been upgraded recently, what does that meant to achieve?

 What we expect in the near future is for the centre to be self-sustaining and to be a centre of excellence, whereby we can serve the immediate and neighbouring communities as far as skill acquisition and entrepreneurship are concerned. As we all know, government cannot cater for all the graduates that are coming out from our tertiary institutions, therefore, we need to find a means to give them alternative skills so that if they cannot get white collar jobs, they can rely on the skills they have acquired. Not only that, they can now transform the skills acquired into full pledged enterprise and contribute to the economic development of the community.

However, if you look round, most of the advanced economies are now reliant on this type of jobs. They rely on cottage industries and on small and medium enterprises. So, this is the beginning, when they are leaving the school they will get inputs whereby they can establish their small and medium enterprises to improve the national GDP. These are actually the goals and dream we have for the centre.

You said the activities of the centre would be extended to the shores of Lake Chad and Niger Republic, how do you intend to do that?

The institution is placed strategically, strategically in the sense that when you go eastward from Geidam up to Lake Chad, there is no institution with the capacity of this polytechnic, and in the same vein, if you move northward up to Niger Republic, there is no single institution with the capacity in terms of manpower, equipment and capability as this institution. Therefore, looking at this strategic position we occupy, we now intend to spread our tentacles so that we can capture all these insurgency ravaged communities that are within the shores of Lake Chad up to Niger Republic so that we can contribute our quota by giving them the required training. 

What effort is the centre making to counter Boko Haram insurgency?

We have a lot of packages for vulnerable youth; we want to give them mentorship, train them in the chosen skills because we have variety of trades here. We have Computer Laboratory, Printing Press and we offer carpentry, tailoring, soap making and cosmetic and furniture making, woodwork machining, GSM repairs as well as fishery and poultry.

What do you do to attract the vulnerable youths?

We lend a hand to community stakeholders to train the vulnerable youth. Last year, we trained 100 youth for Geidam Local Government Area. We also trained another 100 youth under the North East Regional Initiative (NERI), so within the 6 to 7 months that the centre started working, we have trained over 200 youth within the community apart from over 4,000 students that had learnt one or two trades before they graduated. All these youth are the most vulnerable ones in the society because they are Almajiris and those who cannot find job because of their laziness.

We target all the vulnerable youth from the Boko Haram ravaged communities so that we can liaise with all stakeholders to give them the required training. It’s a known fact that the issue of economy is one of the key issues that contribute to the vulnerability of these communities. So, if we can make them self-reliant, then the vulnerability would drop drastically.

Researchers in this institution have pointed out that the economy is one of the fundamentals that contributed to the insurgency situation we find ourselves in today and if we can improve the economy of the people, they will become less vulnerable. This is why we want to improve our coverage up to Lake Chad and Niger Republic.

The project is capital intensive. What is your source of finance?

Yobe State Government is the first call whenever we need support; it’s strongly behind us and always answering our call because they have seen the consequences of the insurgency. The Federal Government has been contributing immensely in this direction; also, the North East Regional Initiative (NERI) is a very good partner and an understanding one. We have other partners, donor agencies and friends of the institution that have shown interest and are always ready to contribute in this direction. Therefore, in terms of funding and equipment we don’t have much problem because we have willing hands to partner with us.

The equipment donated to you by NERI, especially the printing machines, can they sustain the centre? Can the centre be self reliant?  

Yes, the printing machine is very viable in terms of revenue generation, and with the patronage we are now having, we want to believe that printing proceeds will sustain not only the centre for entrepreneurship but to a large extent the day-to-day expenses of the polytechnic as well. This is because it’s a very powerful machine and we have all the facilities and manpower. Most of the higher institutions are now patronizing us and other businesses too. From the records we are getting, we are very optimistic that the printing press alone can sustain the centre and the polytechnic.

Recently, we produced 300,000 booklets for our sister institution and that gave us very good amount that can sustain the centre for the next 6 to 7 months and we are expecting more of such. By the time we get more of such patronage, we are sure of having more than enough to sustain the centre and the institution.

We are committed in providing skills, especially to youth in the host community. So if we work with the stakeholders’ and provide skills, the community will be a hub of entrepreneurship.

Is the entrepreneurship training free of charge?

Yes, that is what we are doing right now. The training we are doing is not for profit making; it is Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). The stakeholders provide the required people, buy the little consumables; the institution is paying the trainers and the entrepreneurship experts.

My advice to the donors is to be with us and always come to our aid and then we would let them know the progress we are making from their contributions. And by the time we give them the feedback they would be happy and be willing to further assist us at anytime.