Smartphone industries will establish plants in Nigeria soon – Minister
The Minister of State for Petroleum, Chief Timipre Sylva, has said that major international smartphone industries would soon establish Assembly plants in Nigeria.
Sylva said this on Monday, in Kano, at the graduation ceremony of 600 youths trained on GSM and smartphone repairs, maintenance, software and hardware specialization.
The training was a collaboration between the Nigeria Content Development and Monitoring Board (NCDMB) and Nasiru Ali-Ahmed, House of Representatives member, representing Nasarawa constituency in the state.
The minister, who spoke via Zoom at the program, noted that Nigeria had the largest GSM market in the whole of the African continent.
According to the minister, training of the youths was part of an agreement reached to boost local content development and one of his ministry’s designed priorities to improve local content development, with youths taking the center stage.
Sylva said that out of the 1,000 youths, 600 had fully graduated and the rest 400 would graduate before Jan. 1, 2021, adding that already, 2,800 youths had been trained in Yobe, Bauchi and Cross River states as Smartphone repairers and technicians.
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In his remarks, Ali-Ahmad said the training on GSM repairs and software maintenance was part of his zeal to ensure that idle youths were fully engaged economically.
He further said that they had designed to train 5,000 more youths in 2021, and all those that have graduated would be provided with shops, tools and starter packs to start their businesses.
Also, in his speech, the Emir of Kano, Aminu Ado Bayero, advised the trained youths against using their acquired skills in carrying out criminal activities.
Some of the youths that spoke during the event commended the federal legislator and the NCDMB for their gesture, and assured of their readiness to make proper use of the skills they had acquired.
