By Bashir Bello

KANO — MTN, the Africa’s largest telecom operator, has encouraged Nigerian youths to leverage on technology and connectivity to showcase their talents towards making differences in their communities in order to inspire others.

The MTN Regional Manager, Sales and Distribution, Kano Area, Abu-Sufyan Aliyu made the call when the train of the MTN project, Go Make A Difference (Go M.A.D) stormed the ancient city of Kano.

Aliyu said they were out to change the mindset of the youths not to look down on whatever they do as it can be a source of inspiration and change the lives of others in the community.

He said the telecom company has fashioned out bundles or data plans tailored to their lifestyles to help them showcase their talents to the globe.

According to him, “If you look at our vision and mission statement at MTN, is all about making people’s life better and living with delivery of bold digital world which is done adequately with our 5G technology and flexible data plans for everyone.

“So after giving everyone opportunity of having their lives brighter, the next is we would like our subscribes and customers to also go make a difference with the data we have given them (connectivity). So the only thing you need to make a difference is the right mindset and some MTN data to connect you to whatever platform you need to connect to learn new things and showcase what you are doing globally.

“So it’s all about making a difference, with MTN data and encouraging the people from all walks of life to do whatever they are doing with so much discipline, passion and resilience and use MTN data to improve what they are doing and showcase what they are doing to serve as example for others to copy.

“The long term goal of this, is for the entire community or society to work towards making people’s live better and making a difference wherever they are and whatever they do.

“This is Kano, the largest city and the commercial nerve center of the Northern region, full of young people that are passionate, energetic, entrepreneurs and knowledgeable. So this kind of movement, ones started in place like Kano, it will go viral, and in no time every youths will be out there to make a difference within his community. Be it a food vendor, barber, mechanic, they would be going out there to make a difference within their community. And before you know it, everybody in Kano is trying to make somebody’s life better, is trying to train somebody, trying to showcase to the globe what he is doing locally, trying to learn new skills either on Twitter, Instagram, YouTube. Trying to learn things like fashion, design and whatever. So we hope in the very near future, this particular movement will go like a wild fire in Kano. And every young person in Kano will be out there trying to make a difference where he lives and showcase to the globe what he or she does and how he makes a difference so that others will copy from what he is doing.

“The target audience are young people because the future is there’s. The target for this project is to encourage young people to go out there and make a difference in the lives people living around them in the communities they stay. And how would they make a difference, we have provided a lot of connectivity through our tailored made data plans to suit the pockets and lifestyle of everyone on platform be it an old person, student, an artisans for it to be affordable to everyone.

“We’ve been to Ibadan, Port Harcourt, Jos, Abuja and now Kano. And we’ve touched so many lives, we brought in icons in the community that have made differences to share their experiences and how they navigate the challenges in the trade they are doing, how they train people in the trade and making differences.

“Like I said earlier, it is suppose to be a contagious movement, a revolution, changing people’s mind not to look down on what they do and to know that no matter how small what you do, you can make a difference in people’s live if you do it seriously and showcase what you do to the globe,” Aliyu said. 

On his part, the Managing Director of Fantel Nigeria Limited, a partner and MTN Icon, Hamza Adamu Fanda shared experience around his business growth and how it is now changing lives in the community.

He said he started the business with two to three staff but has now employed over 200 staff (98% of workforce were youths) and opened over 30 outlets across five states.