The Minister of Youth and Sports Development, Sunday Dare, on Thursday in Abuja said the ministry would train 40,000 youths on cyber security.
Dare, who was represented by the ministry’s Permanent Secretary, Ismaila Abubakar, disclosed this during the signing of the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) and the take-off of the project on cyber security.
He said the training has become imperative as a way of instituting effective impact in curbing the growing rate of youth unemployment in Nigeria.
Dare stated that the training would include competition, certification and internship.
“This training is very significant and timely because we have a growing population of youths ready to offer a wide pool of talents in Information and Communication Technology (ICT).
“Also, the youths can be trained to utilise, develop and drive technological advancements that can respond to any emerging challenges for the development of the nation.
“The programme is coming at a crucial period in the life of our nation, when government must provide the impetus towards empowering the Nigerian youth for self-reliance,’’ he said.
Dare disclosed that the World Economic Forum on cyber security, along with Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Data Analytics, now offers great career opportunities to professionals.
He said the opportunity with stringent regulation would see an increased demand for cyber security professionals in Nigeria.
The minister, however, emphasised the need to leverage the skills demands to curb the unemployment rate in Nigeria while promoting national cyber security.
Dare said Nigeria’s National Digital Economy Policy and Strategy has identified cyber security as a crucial pillar in diversifying the country’s economy.
He said many would agree with him that the year 2021 was exciting in the cyber security space both locally and internationally.
“It is noteworthy to state that cyber breaches and attacks were experienced in the economy’s public and private sectors.
“A significant trend was that no organisation appeared immune to cyber-attacks.
“Even institutions that had made significant investments in cyber security experienced high-profile attacks,’’ the minister said.
Dare said overall spending on technology has been earmarked to increase by more than 50 per cent between 2015 and 2030 while about half would be on information-technology services.
He said that the number of people employed in these occupations would be significant and would benefit from the promise of their occupations being a high-wage sector.
“By 2030, it is estimated that this trend can create 20 million to 50 million jobs globally.”
Dare said the ministry, after considerable research, has aimed at consistently providing various youth empowerment programmes.
He said it was in the same spirit the Federal Government and the ministry in 2020 launched the DEEL Initiative.
“The initiative stands for `Digital Skills Acquisition’ with the goal of training up to 200,000 youths in digital skills across the country using the National Youth Development Centres.
“Others are Entrepreneurship Empowerment, a partnership with the Development Bank of Nigeria which has already began with the Youth Investment Fund, where 1.5 million Nigerian youths are benefiting from various forms of loans.”
Dare said the training would engage the youths on cyber security awareness to fight against cyber-attacks and also offer a range of certification programmes that may offer permanent job placements.
“The programme will entail free general cyber security training as a prerequisite for participants to be eligible for the competition.
“There will be certification and internship and job placement for successful participants.
“The Nigerian youths are expected to apply, get trained and compete for the first, second and third cash prizes of one million Naira, N650,000 and N350,000 respectively,’’ he said.
The minister said the programme was aimed at creating an enabling platform for skills acquisition, youth empowerment and local content development in the area of information technology and cyber security.
Wale Adeagbo, the Chief Operating Officer of Halogen Group who are working with the ministry on cyber security, said the group’s focus was to provide security.
Adeagbo said since the country has the challenge of cyber insecurity the group was ready to carry out free online cyber security training for youths in Nigeria.
He said the training would be a continuous engagement with the ministry.
“The training will enable youths become entrepreneurs and as such create more jobs for them.”
(NAN)