By Emem Idio – Yenagoa

THE National Directorate of Employment, NDE, has commenced the training of one hundred unemployed graduates across the eight local government areas of Bayelsa State on entrepreneurial and business skills.

The Director General of NDE, Mallam Abubakar Fikpo, who flagged-off the weeklong trainingz tasked unemployed graduates on the need to embrace self-employment as government and the organised private sector cannot provide jobs for the teeming number of unemployed graduates.

He said recent events have shown that more private universities are being licence with the consequential effect of churning out more graduates on yearly basis while there is a disconnect between the job opening and the number of graduates being produced.

Mallam Fikpo who was represented by the Bayelsa State Coordinator Mr. Aham Osuchukwu, expressed confidence that the beneficiaries would at the end of the training realised that they have been their own worst enemies for having failed to embrace self-employment option.

He said: “This entrepreneurial and business skills training is aimed at inculcating into the the graduates entrepreneurial skills and counselling them into choosing the self-employment option instead of waiting endlessly for the elusive and non-available white-collar job.

“The federal government has established a lot of institutions that can fund entrepreneurial ideas and turn it to viable businesses but our graduates are oblivious of these agencies, structures and requirements. The blue-chip companies that we wish to elusively work for today was a personal idea of someone.”