10th April, 2017
Hope Afresh Foundation, the pet project of Mrs. Anna Ishaku, wife of Taraba Governor, has entered into a partnership with the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), to train 10,000 youths on entrepreneurship skills.
Ishaku disclosed this on Monday in Jalingo, at a ceremony to flag off the training of the first batch, made up of 220 participants.
She said that the exercise was targeted at creating jobs and alleviating poverty among the people.
“The level of poverty in Taraba is alarming; we want to create jobs for the people and improve their living conditions.
“We are executing this project in conjunction with the Enterprise Development Centre of the Central Bank of Nigeria.
“The centre has accepted to relocate from Maiduguri, the Zonal headquarters, to Taraba, for the purpose of this training.
“I was told by the officials of CBN that out of 8,000 people trained in the Northeast, only 10 persons were from Taraba.
“That really challenged me to go into partnership with the bank to ensure that the training was done here for our people to benefit, giving the distance from Taraba to Maiduguri, and considering the security situation there,’’ she said.
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Ishaku tasked he participants to take the training seriously so as to become experts in their various trades.
“I urge you to take the training seriously and become global players in order to help yourselves and improve the nation’s economy,’’ she said.
Earlier, Alhaji Abubakar Umar, an official of the Enterprise Development Centre of the CBN, had commended the wife of the governor for facilitating the training in Taraba.
Umar said that the trainees would be taught on how to write bankable business plans that would help them access loans for their businesses, after the 16 weeks training.
According to him, CBN will partner the Taraba Micro Finance Bank to ensure that participants had access to loans of between N1 million and N3 million for individuals, and N3 million to N10 million for groups, to start their businesses after the exercise.