Over the course of the last four years, Governor Mai Mala Buni has created slew of new government Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) to improve and consolidate on what his administration is doing to serve the people of Yobe State.
One of these MDAs is the Ministry of Wealth Creation, Empowerment and Employment Generation, which the governor established a little over two years ago. After passing the initial set up phase, the Ministry hit the ground running with a business census across the 178 electoral wards of the state to streamline a register of micro, small, and medium businesses for the purpose of support by the state government.
To date, the Ministry had undertaken three different empowerment phases in which a variety of items and tools and cash support were given to largely small and medium business people across the state. These include 100 Toyota Avensis cars given to members of the state branch of the National Union of Road Transport Workers (NURTW) and others, big and small-sized grinding machines, vulcanizing machines, irrigation pumps for different farmer associations, barbershop kits, poultry and fishing kits, GSM handset repair kits and laptops, KEKE NAPEP and JEGA tricycles, etc.
In collaboration with the Sir Ahmadu Bellow Memorial Foundation, the Ministry had also undertaken a train- the-trainer workshop, in which 50 existing small business persons, including mechanics, tailors, caterers, fish, poultry and livestock farmers, amongst others, were trained on soft business skills with a plan to later attach one trainee to each one of them so that they train those trainees for a period of one year. At the end of the one-year period, it is planned that the Yobe State Government and the Sir Ahmadu Bello Memorial Foundation would jointly provide starter kits to enable the trainees to set up their own small businesses. This is designed to reduce joblessness and enhance the capacity of youths to contribute meaningfully to the state’s economy.
As a result of its empowerment activities, the Ministry of Wealth Creation, Empowerment and Employment Generation has further spurred economic activity across Yobe State and has given a sense of hope to numerous small businesses and individuals for whom the support provided by the Buni administration has meant so much.
Governor Buni has also established a contributory healthcare management agency called YSCHMA. The objective of this agency is to improve universal health coverage and access to cheap medical care.
As at September 2023, YSCHMA has enrolled a total of 276,228 beneficiaries from all nooks and crannies of the state. According to the YSCHMA Executive Secretary, Dr Babagana Tijjani, YSCHMA is poised to ensure that 75% of the entire people of Yobe State are enrolled by the end of 2024. Enrollees into the YASCHMA scheme pay only 10% of the cost of medical care.
The Buni administration is also paying lots of attention to the education sector, working within limited resources to reverse years of devastation wrought upon the sector by the Boko Haram Insurgency. A key focus of that attention is students’ scholarships.
Records show that 38,183 Yobe students currently pursuing different academic courses in 53 institutions of learning across the country are receiving government scholarships. A total of 169 others are studying on government scholarships in 17 foreign countries while 233 are in India under the Buni Special Foreign Scholarships Scheme. The Buni administration has also sponsored 358 law students into the Nigeria Law School in three years and 874 others into the Arabic and French Village B. ED and NCE programmes.
In terms of direct recruitment into the state’s civil service, the Buni Administration, since it came to power, has employed a total of 1200 people into the state’s healthcare sector, including doctors, student doctors and community nurses; 4000 teachers in the education sector; 2,670 recruited from the 178 electoral wards of the state; 150 in the judicial service; and 38 in the College of Agriculture.
In so many different ways, the actions of the Buni Administration across different socio-economic sectors, as highlighted and in the two previous parts of the series “Gov. Mai Mala Buni: Building a S t r o n g e r P o s t – I n s u r g e n c y Yo b e S t a t e ” a r e t e s t a m e n t to the effort of Governor Mai Mala Buni to steadily but surely move Yobe State forward after years of being held back by the ruthless and senseless Boko Haram Insurgency.
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