Mr Afolabi Imoukhuede, the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Job Creation and Youth Employment has expressed displeasure at the poor command of the English language among many teachers in the N-Power volunteer scheme.
He therefore advised the volunteer teachers to acquire expert teaching skills and master the English language in order to add value to the educational future of pupils.
Mr Imoukhuede gave the advice in Awka on Saturday, during an interactive session with N-Power volunteers.
He urged them to always strive to develop themselves by reading a lot to enable them to impart the relevant knowledge.
“You are being entrusted with the lives of children.
“One of the reasons you are posted by virtue of your places of residence is for you to add value to your immediate community where your children may also be schooling.
“In doing so, if you sow good seeds, you reap good harvest but if you don’t you may end up destroying the future of the children which is not the intention of this scheme.
“This is a call to duty for the supervisors, especially for those in the primary schools,’’ he said.
Imoukhuede also advised the volunteers to do themselves and the state the honour of imbibing the values of the programme by being humble and obeying the instructions and standard practice in their places of work.
According to him, insubordination, indiscipline, dishonesty and truancy are not part of the values of the scheme.
He, therefore, warned the undisciplined volunteers that the scheme would show them the way out the same way they were engaged and paid through technology should they found wanting..
“This warning is especially for those who get stipends but are not working; we will check you out,’’ he said.
He further told the volunteers there was much to learn in the scheme to help sustain them after two years.
He advised that they should not place so much emphasis on stipends.
“The programme is beyond the stipends; do not focus so much attention to stipends and forget why you are in the programme.
Imoukhuede re-iterated that President Buhari had included the N30,000 monthly stipend for motivation, excluded them from paying taxes for two years and offered them chance for two years’ experience being the minimum needed by employers for new intakes.
Besides that, he said that those who applied themselves to the manuals developed in teaching, agriculture, healthcare and entrepreneurship, would have cause to be self-employed or employers of labour after the two-year programme.
“Your request to make the scheme permanent should not be the issue now as you are worried about tomorrow when you have not applied yourself to today,’’ he said.
Imoukhuede said he was glad that of the 4,520 volunteers selected in Anambra 4,011 passed physical verification while 509 were absolutely unqualified.
He said, “3,650 are NIBBS verified while 361 are not; 121 of you do not have account records.’’
Special Assistant to Gov. Willie Obiano on Social Investment, Chinwe Iwuchukwu, thanked the federal government for the N-Power initiative, which had reduced the nation’s high unemployment rate.
“This programme is a success in our state and the entire country,’’ Iwuchukwu said and hailed Gov. Obiano for partnering the federal government.
She reminded the volunteers not to throw away the chance as “there are millions of youths out there ready to take up the jobs even without pay.’’
A volunteer electrical engineer and computer scientist, Mr Chinenye Anonu, who demonstrated his digital logic training system for teaching, called on the youth to embrace digital technology.
According to him, it is trending at the moment.
Anonu said the transparency in the N-Power process and the commitment of the operators underscored the personalities of Buhari and acting President Yemi Osinbajo.
He expressed appreciation to the Presidency for offering the youth the opportunity to showcase their talents. (NAN)