By Our Correspondent

The Federal Government has reiterated its determination and resolve to accord high premium attention to the implementation of Policies that would  actualize our youth creative potential for National growth and  development,   and as well sharpen their global competitive edge.

Honourable Minister of Youth and Sports Development, Mr. Sunday Dare made this known  while receiving delegates from IBM West Africa in his office today  in Abuja.

According to the Minister, most people by default address him as Minister of Sports Development, yanking off the Youth aspect of the Ministry: that is why in the last five months, the Ministry has been trying to engage the youth to make them relevant through youth developmental programs. The Ministry, he stated , deliberately canvassed for  partners to collaborate with in achieving the two clear mandates of youth development and sports development. To this end, Mr. Dare added that the Ministry has launched programmes most specifically, to address Youth development:  one of such is  DEEL; which  is meant to keep the Nigerian Youth busy through digital skills acquisition.

”DEEL resonates with IBM because of the digital skills acquisition” ,  the Minister enthused.

The Country General Manager, IBM West Africa,  Mr. Dipo Faulkner, in his response, said that IBM offers only online content made available to anyone but it does not provide devices. IBM, he stated, has three categories of  training programmes; Digital National Africa (DNA), to improve digital literacy of African youth and it is open to all with / without digital literacy.

The second one called “Innovators” is to help structure the creativity of youths who are into design concepts. New collar is the third one meant to re-orientate the youths after graduation to help them adjust to real life situations in offices. The programmes, according to  Mr Faulkner, are free, friendly and instruction based.

The IBM Country Manager emphasized that every Nigerian youth must be digitaly literate irrespective of what they studied, to be relevant in this digital age.

The Ministry’s Permanent Secretary, Mr. Gabriel Tanimu Aduda, in his welcome remarks, said the Ministry is not taking the meeting with IBM lightly,  in view of the commitment of the present administration  to  digital literacy of the Nigerian youth.