The Minister of Labour and Employment, Alhaji Muhammadu Maigari Dingyadi, has announced that the Federal Government will soon launch a nationwide awareness campaign to discourage illegal migration among Nigerian youths.
He explained that the initiative aims to promote legal and structured labour migration pathways instead.
Dingyadi made this known in Abuja on Wednesday while hosting a delegation from the Germany Giessen-Friedberg Chambers of Commerce, which is visiting Nigeria to support safe and lawful labour migration.
“We are trying to put in place an efficient publicity to discourage people from going into that and to show them why we should not go into illegal migration because facilities are being provided for legalizing this migration and if we do it both of us stand to benefit from this exercise,” he said.
The minister expressed delight that he is meeting the delegation for the second time within a short period to further deepen engagement around legal labour migration and dual vocational training.
He commended the chambers for initiating the pilot phase of the Dual Vocational Training Programme involving 18 young Nigerian, who will be deployed to Germany.
Dingyadi noted that Nigeria has a large youth population eager to acquire skills and engage in gainful employment.
“Please I encourage you to do more in this area because we have so many young men and women out there looking for skills so that we can reduce the level of unemployment in our country,” he said.
In his remarks, the leader of the delegation and CEO of the Chambers, Dr. Matthias Leder, said they are in the office of the minister to formally invite him to the unveiling of the 18 Nigerians so far selected to commence dual vocational training in Germany.
“We have already started this prototype. Out of 300 young Nigerians we invited them to participate in two-stage competition and we selected 18, who are now learning German. The good new is that they have passed the most difficult stage – the A1 level of German and we are going to celebrate them on November 12 in Lagos. We we here to formally invite you to the occasion,” he said.
Leder said the Chamber is committed to discouraging illegal migration through dangerous routes, which is putting the lives of young Nigerians at risk.
Instead, he said those wishing to migrate to Germany can invest in learning the German language to prepare them for dual vocational training in that country.