The Minister of Youth Development, Ayodele Olawande, has said the introduction of the Compressed Natural Gas training for National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) members will create new job opportunities and expand entrepreneurship prospects for young Nigerians beyond their service year.
This was disclosed in a post on the National Youth Service Corps’ official X handle on Wednesday.
Olawande stated this during the opening ceremony of the CNG retrofitting training programme for corps members held at the NYSC FCT Orientation Camp in Kubwa, Abuja.
The minister urged participating corps members to maximise the opportunity provided by the training, assuring them that the Ministry of Youth Development would continue to support initiatives aimed at equipping young Nigerians with practical skills and promoting entrepreneurship.
He encouraged the corps members to embrace cheaper and more sustainable energy alternatives while using vocational skills to complement their academic qualifications.
The NYSC Director-General, Brigadier General Olakunle Nafiu, described the programme as a demonstration of inter-agency collaboration and the Scheme’s support for the Federal Government’s Renewed Hope Agenda.
Nafiu said the NYSC is prepared to support Nigeria’s ongoing energy transition, noting that the scheme has since 2012, trained more than three million corps members in various skills, including financial literacy, agro-allied services, proposal writing, information and communication technology and fashion design.
He added that corps members now had increased access to financial support through the scheme’s partnerships with other organisations.
According to him, the CNG retrofitting training would help bridge the gap between classroom education and practical industry applications.
“The CNG retrofitting training supports the one trillion dollar innovation-driven economy. This carefully selected programme would bridge the gap between classroom learning and real-world applications,” Nafiu said.
Senior Special Assistant to President Bola Tinubu on Youth Initiatives, Monitoring and Delivery, Titilope Gbadamosi, said the programme is designed to place Nigerian youths at the centre of the country’s transition to alternative energy.
She disclosed that the initiative would support the target of retrofitting 100,000 vehicles annually, adding that the training would be implemented across Nigeria’s six geopolitical zones.
Gbadamosi said 300 corps members would be trained under the programme and certified as technicians before being attached to different CNG centres.
She added that the National Automotive Design and Development Council had committed its technical expertise towards certification standards and funding for the initiative.
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Chairman of the Presidential Initiative on Compressed Natural Gas and Electric Vehicles, Ismaeel Ahmed, said the partnership between the NYSC and NADDC would create opportunities for Nigerians as the CNG sector continues to expand.
Ahmed noted that more CNG conversion centres have emerged over the past two years, while interest in natural gas-powered vehicles had continued to grow.
He said the government’s role is to create an enabling environment for CNG and electric mobility to develop and generate economic opportunities.
Also speaking, the Director-General of the National Automotive Design and Development Council, Otunba Oluwemimo Osanipin, described the CNG retrofitting training as a deliberate effort to translate the federal government’s Renewed Hope Agenda into practical opportunities for young Nigerians.
He said the collaboration represented an important step towards placing Nigerian youths at the centre of national development, particularly in emerging sectors of the economy.
The initiative is expected to equip participating corps members with specialised technical skills while creating a pathway for employment and entrepreneurship in Nigeria’s growing CNG conversion and automotive services sector.
