Date: 2017-02-17

Kwara state government has hosted over 600 youth in the state to a one-day business ideation and planning workshop to help the youth access over 80 per cent of business funding windows available across the globe.

Speaking with journalists during the workshop, the senior special assistant to the governor on Youth Empowerment, Mr. Saka Babatunde, said that high youth unemployment rate in Nigeria was scary.

"Youth unemployment rate in Nigeria increased to 24 per cent in the second quarter of 2016 from 21.50 per cent in the first quarter of 2016. This statistics shows that the young people of today face the likelihood of becoming victims of both unemployment and restiveness", he said.

The governor's aide said that Nigerian youth could solve the impending huge economic and social disaster occasioned by unemployment by deciding to use their skills, creative energy and potential productivity rather than waiting for nonexistent white collar jobs and ephemeral 'handouts.'

He also said that the workshop was aimed at enabling youth to engage in profitable discourse with drivers and leaders of youth development, describing the initiative as Kwara Youth Empowerment Programme (KWAYEP), a sustainable economic and start-up growth agenda.

Delivering a lecture, titled, business conceptualisation and planning to access local and foreign loans and grants, Mr. Tope Amujo of Kwara State Agromall said that money was not all that was needed to start up a business, adding that a business plan, which include technical plan, made up of idea, concept and product process was imperative.

He listed other programmes in business plan needed to start up a business to include corporate plan, marketing plan, financial plan and sustainability plan.

Amujo, who advised participants at the training workshop against "copy and paste" of business plan of other people, said that business plans were never the same.

He also challenged the youth to look for problems they could solve in their different environments, saying, "we live in environment where problems abound. So, we should look for ways of solving them to earn a living."