Rivers State government says it has concluded plans to train 700 youths in the State ICT sector free of charge to further reduce the issues of youths restiveness in the state.
Senior Special Assistant to the governor on ICT, Ibifuro Asawo said this during the pre-screening activity at the Rivers State, ICT center at Aba Road in Port Harcourt.
He said over seven thousand applicants are vying for the Codegaminators training program which comprises 3 months lectures and 3 months internship program.
Ibifuro Asawo said, 70 to 30 ratio is in favor of Rivers Candidates, 80 to 20 ratio in favor of graduates, 40 percent implementation for females, 10 percent for People Living with Disability.
”The State Government has decided to make this free. And so because it was made free we have this surge. We thought we will just have one thousand, two thousand but we’re having about seven thousand people coming in for this course”.
”So what we intend to do now is to have a pre-screening activity, so this is a pre-screening activity, we have put them into a batch of four hundred per batch for them to actually come for this particular programme. So they come and then we’re able to spend two hours with them. So we’ve given them resources as well that will be able to occupy them this period” he said.
He urged the youths that will participate to avoid distraction and be fully focused during the period as the Codegaminators program will be intense.
The Senior Special Adviser to the Governor on ICT, Ibifuro Asawo also said the programme will help youths channel their energy to productive things to minimize youth restiveness.
”Conscious succession plan in the industry to ensure that we have an ecosystem that will gradually succeed itself as long as the industry is operating. If you look at what we’re doing is a tactical approach to ensure that they are gainfully employed”.
“Within these three months, there will be a lot of orientation activities that will take place, that will shift their minds from anything evil to productive thinking. Because is the same energy so they will channel the energy to something productive. So youth empowerment is one way the government is taking steps to ensure it minimizes youth restiveness to the barest minimum” he said.
Courses for the program are; animation, programming, game development, photography, and cinematography, cybersecurity Hardware and network, Database, graphics, etc.
