NDDC Boss: Project HOPE ‘ll Create 10,000 Jobs for N’Delta Youths

Blessing Ibunge in Port Harcourt

The Managing Director of the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC), Dr. Samuel Ogbuku, has assured that the newly flagged-off Holistic Opportunity Project of Engagement (Project HOPE), would create over 10,000 jobs for youths and women in the Niger Delta region.

Ogbuku, disclosed this yesterday during the flag-off of the project at the commission’s headquarters in Port Harcourt, Rivers State’s capital.

Project HOPE was set up to tackle the challenges of youth restiveness and give succour to the youths of the Niger Delta region.

The project is also designed to create a comprehensive potential resources database of the youths’ population of the region, with a focus on their needs, qualifications, skills, passion, interests, and employment status.

Ogbuku said that the project is holistic while assuring its sustainability, just as he encouraged the Niger Delta youths and women to embrace the opportunity, adding that NDDC has chosen to do things differently.

He said: “We have from day one said we want to do things that are more sustainable. We can’t be doing things in the old way and expect different results.” 

“We believe this is a new approach that is in conformity with present reality that is in conformity with international best practices. So, let people in the region be seen to be growing.

“From this Project Hope, we are going to ensure that lots of jobs are created because we are looking at creating about 10,000 jobs with 1,000 per state minimum. We are going back to go into agro-allied investments where we are going to engage our youths.

“We are also going to engage our youths in the area of IT. We are also going to engage our youths in technology. We are also bringing other programmes under Project Hope.”

The NDDC boss said that under Project Hope, data base would be created and youths would be nominated for training in areas they have passion and interest in.

Ogbuku said: “Over the years what has been happening is that because of political interests, people are given slots to nominate participants for empowerment programmes and most of these participants never had passion for these training programmes.

“After the training programmes, you see people selling off the starter-packs and other equipment that were given to them after the training.

“In this case, we believe that once we pick you from the data based on your area of interest and passion, you are going to excel from there. And since you are in our data base, we will also have our monitoring process in the data base to be monitoring.”

Also speaking, Creative Director of Project Hope, Blessing Fubara, said that the project came with a lot of expectations for youths in the region.

Fubara explained that “Project HOPE is designed to deploy the first Niger Delta Youth Potential Resources Database System, which is qualification, skills, interest, status and passion identification. This will then give us the parameter for employment generation, youth empowerment, and capacity development in the region.”

Fubara added that the first strategy of the project is designed to create one thousand jobs for the youths per state, through the development of agro-allied partnered industries in the nine states according to their potentials and resources.