NACA, ministry educate okada riders, mechanics on HIV/AIDS

The Permanent Secretary, Federal Ministry of Youth Development Hajiya Rabi Jimeta, at a workshop with the theme, ‘Effective Coordination of Out of School Youth HIV/AIDS Prevention Intervention’ last week in Abuja said the intervention is necessary to spread the information on the control of HIV/AIDS among out-of-school youths.“We are concerned because this affects mostly the […]

The Permanent Secretary, Federal Ministry of Youth Development Hajiya Rabi Jimeta, at a workshop with the theme, ‘Effective Coordination of Out of School Youth HIV/AIDS Prevention Intervention’ last week in Abuja said the intervention is necessary to spread the information on the control of HIV/AIDS among out-of-school youths.
“We are concerned because this affects mostly the young people and that is why we are teaming up with NACA, NYSC, World Bank and all other stakeholders working with youths to fight the scourge,” she said.
The Director General NACA, Professor John Idoko, represented by Kingsley Essomeonu, Youth Focal Officer of the agency, said NACA has support from the World Bank to support the Ministry of Youth Development from the federal and state levels in combating the scourge of HIV/AIDS among the youth.
“This intervention is focusing on out-of-school youth that is, young people who are not in secondary, primary or tertiary institutions. We have a policy that says we must not talk of condom to those in school and for us to reach the out-of-school we have to look for a way of addressing them.
“We are looking at the okada riders, mechanics and so on. Most of these are into illicit drugs that can influence them to go into unprotected sex and we must find a way of reaching them. That is the idea of selecting these coordinators at state level to empower them to coordinate at their state level whereby they will be testing and counseling this group of youth,” he said.
The Director General NYSC, Brigadier-General Johnson Bamidele Olawumi, who was represented by Linda Amugo said that the NYSC has been passionate in fighting the scourge of HIV/AIDS thereby appealing to stakeholders to empower the scheme.
“We appeal to the stakeholders to empower the NYSC so that we can do much more than we are doing now. We have the largest number of youth and the largest members of our corps members in the three batches yearly are at the local government areas.”