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By Nwakaego Alajemba
The presidency is collaborating with the National Automotive Design and Development Council (NADDC) to facilitate capacity training in the automobile industry for about 20,000 non-graduate volunteers.
The volunteers have been selected to kick off the N-Build programme in collaboration with the NADDC and the Council of Registered Builders of Nigeria. This was revealed in the address yesterday by President Muhammadu Buhari to commemorate the 2018 Democracy Day celebration.
The “N-Power Job creation Scheme is targeted at providing jobs for unemployed young graduates and has so far recruited 200,000 youths while the next batch of 300,000 have been selected, verified and would soon be deployed across the 36 States and the FCT. Furthermore, 20,000 non-graduate volunteers have also been selected to kick off the N-Build programme in collaboration with the National Automotive Design and Development Council and the Council of Registered Builders of Nigeria,” the president announced in a long speech detailing his government’s achievements in the last three years; road-map for employment and youths capacity training.
The NADDC is charged with directing affairs in Nigeria’s struggling auto industry.
Since its Director General, Mr. Jelani Aliyu, assumed office over a year ago, the NADDC has since sought to inject a fresh vim into the sector through collaboration and empowerment schemes targeting young people with professional training in contemporary automobile design and development.
Training centres in Lagos and Zaria are expected to pioneer the local capacity drive of the NADDC.
“We are committed to building an industry around highly skilled Nigerians in innovation, design, and development that can sustain a virile automotive and transportation sector in Nigeria,” Aliyu told IT Edge News in an earlier interview. We are looking at automobile products that reflect the local climate and economic realities,” said Aliyu.
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According to Aliyu, the NADDC, which recently held talks with NISSAN, plans to make Nigeria the automotive design and development hub of Africa.
As part of its National Automotive Industrial Development Plan, the organisation is already working on building automotive supplier parks in Nnewi, Kaduna and Oshogbo that would go into automotive components production.
The new deal with the presidency will further thicken its value proposition on local content and capacity development, sail Aliyu.
