By Bashir Hassan Abubakar
Towards enhancing youth capabilities and leveraging on technology & ICT to transform the lives of young people, Oxfam Nigeria has facilitated the accreditation of it’s Bits-supported Schools in Nigeria by the National Business and Technical Educational Board (NABTEB) to award Diploma certificates to students.
This was disclosed in a press statement by Oxfam Nigeria’s country director Dr. Vincent Ahonsi and made available to our correspondent in Bauchi.
The statement said that the Bits Academy in Nigeria is a Digital Design School initiative of “We are Bits Consortium” set up by the OXFAM and its Work in Progress Project Alliance.
According to the statement, the Alliance has branches across several nations and leverages technology & ICT to transform the lives of young people which is aimed at building young people’s skills for today, and for the future to enable them to find paid jobs or set up their own enterprises.
Over the last six years, Oxfam through the Bits Schools (EkoBits in Lagos and EdoBits in Benin City) has trained over 1000 youths on Web Design, Creative Design, Photography & UI/UX, and Digital Marketing; and facilitated the engagement of 80% of these youth in gainful employment and jobs.
Commenting on the initiative’s milestone, the Country Director of Oxfam International, Dr. Vincent Ahonsi said the NABTEB Diploma certificate accreditation is timely because it will not just give Nigerian youths the opportunity for development and recognition, but also amplify their voices and engagement in national discourse.
Dr. Ahonsi opined that enhancing Nigerian youths’ employability and entrepreneurial skills is a pathway towards their economic independence; and ability to improve their livelihood, and support the building of a just, inclusive and prosperous nation.
While commending Oxfam’s local partners working to narrow the digital divide, and empowering young girls and women with IT and Sexual Reproductive Health (SRH) skills; Dr. Ahonsi advised Nigeria Government to, as a matter of urgency, Improve its anti-rape law to define rape as lack of consent rather than violence, and to explicitly include marital rape and increase its minimum wage.
Ahonsi also called on extending worker’s rights and social protection as much as possible to workers in informal and vulnerable employment.
The statement also quoted Dr. Ahonsi’s renewed Oxfam’s earlier call to Nigeria Government to:
“Increase its spending on education and health, and ensure that more of all its social spending gets to the poor to address chronic underfunding of public services and very poor outcomes/coverage for the poorest”.
It also called on government to “Scale-up social protection, including enacting the social protection plans for the country to meet coverage levels more in line with Nigeria’s middle-income status”.
Other asks of Oxfam to the Nigerian Government was to Improve transparency and accountability by publishing budgets both at federal and state levels and enabling greater scrutiny of future allocations and expenditure by making education budgets publicly available.
It also urged Governments to take advantage of the COVID-related offers of debt relief to get its current debt service suspended, and negotiate a comprehensive cancellation of its overall debt as soon as possible.