No fewer than 5,000 persons are expected to attend the maiden Ekiti State Entrepreneurship Week, targeted at empowering a total of 2,000 unemployed persons with skills and start-up capital.
The state government at a news conference, jointly addressed by the trio of Commissioners of Trade and Investment, Chief David Olusoga, Information, Chief Muyiwa Olumilua as well as the Managing Director of Ekiti Fountain Holdings Limited, Oscar Seyi-Ayeleso, explained that the move was aimed at reducing alarming rate of unemployment in the state.
Olusoga, said Governor Kayode Fayemi and his wife, Bisi were deeply worried that many able-bodied men and women, with sound educational background are unemployed.
According to him, 2,000 of the 5,000 participants expected, would be trained in various skills capable of making them stand on their feet, after which they would be empowered to enable them function without hitches.
“It is the thinking of government that investment in youth will greatly increase the like hood of Ekiti youths bulge and reduce threat to its security and future development,” he said.
He said the entrepreneurship programme was patterned after the Annual Global Entrepreneurship Week, (GEW), an annual international programme that had consistently introduced entrepreneurship to young people across the globe since it started in 2018.
“The Ekiti version of the GEW is, therefore, a strategy to upscale the development of the spirit of entrepreneurship among the youths of Ekiti State.