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SEEFOR ‘ll Reduce Militancy In N’ Delta – Minister
The Minister of National
Planning, Abubakar Sulaiman, said that effective implementation of the State Employment and Expenditure for Results (SEEFOR) project will reduce militancy in the Niger Delta region.
Sulaiman, in a statement issued in Abuja, said this at a stakeholders validation workshop on the informal sector of the SEEFOR Project in Asaba.
The statement was signed by the Head of Information Unit of the commission, Mr Salisu Haiba.
The minister said that activities of militants and other criminality in the Niger Delta region would be reduced to the barest minimum through effective implementation of the SEEFOR project.
“SEEFOR project does not only create jobs but by extension, assists in addressing militancy, criminality, insurgency and other social vices through effective engagement of unemployed youths.
“SEEFOR is a World Bank intervention project in the Niger Delta region as part of its contribution to the Federal Government’s amnesty programme towards reducing poverty and unemployment,” he said.
Sulaiman said the project had already created over 8,695 jobs in two years in the four Niger Delta states, in which Delta alone accounted for 5,444 jobs.”
According to him, the states participating in the project are Edo, Delta, Bayelsa and Rivers, noting that they were selected based on high rate of unemployment and poverty they recorded.
The minister said that the workshop was to validate the report of the study, including the associated findings.
“Also to harvest ideas from stakeholders within the Niger Delta region to further enrich the quality of the report,” he said.
The Acting Secretary, National Planning Commission, Bassey Akpanyung, said the conduct of the informal sector study in the SEEFOR beneficiary states had a great potential for the realisation of inclusive growth and employment generation.
Represented by Prof. Olufemi Taiwo, the Director-General, Nigerian Institute for Social and Economic Research, (NISER) Akpanyung said that the informal sector fitted perfectly into the manufacturing, agriculture, solid minerals and services agenda.