As part of its commitment to increasing business opportunities and creating a standard of living for citizens in the country, business leaders including CBN Governor, Godwin Emefiele, Dangote Group Chairman Aliko Dangote amongst others have made effort to achieve this by empowering four million youths with a sum of N175billion.

Recall that CACOVID was created by the Bankers’ Committee, comprising of banks and major private sector players to address the funding challenges faced by federal and state governments fighting the COVID-19 pandemic.

According to CBN Boss, Godwin Emefiele, who chairs the Banker’s committee said that the rate of unemployment among the youths, was a critical factor behind the #EndSARS protests.

He said: “CACOVID has committed to creating a high impact youth development programme that will provide technical and vocational education to over four million youths over the next five years.

 “Students will be trained on craftwork, plumbing, masonry, carpentry, and other artisanal related skills for which sufficient demand exist in Nigeria.

“Over N150 billion is expected to be deployed towards the set up and implementation of the youth development program, which will be available at select training centers across the country.”

In the same vein, Emefiele identified the provision of employable skills as the ultimate objective of the intervention.

He said: “We believe this initiative can lead to the creation of over four million jobs over the next five years.

“For the out of school graduates that possess certain Entrepreneurial skills, CA-COVID will be working with Bankers Committee to complete the Creative center at National Arts Theater area of Lagos in four select areas namely: ICT and software design/development, fashion, music and movies. This project is expected to cost the Bankers Committee over N40billion.”

While explaining the reasons why security should not be left for the government body to handle alone, he said all private sectors have roles to play to safe guard the country.

His words: “Addressing insecurity could undermine confidence in the economy and derail the efforts of the government in enabling faster recovery of the economy, following the impact of COVID-19. The coalition has, therefore, committed N100 billion to fully rehabilitate all 44 damaged and destroyed police stations nationwide.

“The fund will be used to procure equipment and gadgets for the Nigerian Police Force over the next two years as CACOVID contribution to fully modernise the Nigerian Police.

“Indeed, owners of business premises desire a secure environment to conduct their legitimate businesses. We therefore seize this opportunity to once again, appeal to members of the private sector, who we will be calling on again, to rally round CA-COVID to secure not only our businesses but also our country.

“We also request the private sector to work with to operate under this platform which has been approved by Mr President. “To achieve this, the coalition requested and received N39.64 billion and donations from over 200 Nigerians and corporate organisations, who provided in-kind donations in support of the fight against COVID-19.”

Speaking on the development, Aliko Dangote stressed that the CA-COVID team will create a database for artisans that would benefit from the new training in other to reduce the risk of involving the wrong set of people.

 He said: “We all have repairs and with that data, you can know who to call for repairs. What we are doing is that we are providing them with money to buy tools.

“So, as soon as they get the training which is free, which we are paying for, then they have the guarantee that they get jobs,”

Similarly, Access Bank boss, Herbert Wigwe maintained that security is an essential factor in a country.

His words: “The most important thing has to do with issues of employment. The pandemic and the lockdown created several problems.”

 “All of us have a responsibility to make Nigeria succeed,” the CA-COVID initiative has brought enormous success to the people and helped in fighting the COVID-19 pandemic.”

Meanwhile, Esetupe, a key driver of CACOVID, hinted that selected students at the end of the programme will receive loans to support their entrepreneurial pursuits.

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As global economy is devastatingly hit by the lingering infectious disease, Elumelu advised investors to take advantage of the situation to invest in Nigeria, and other countries in Africa.

In an interview with Time, Elumelu pitched investors to put their bets on Africa’s economy for good returns.

His words; “Africa is a land of opportunity. Challenges exist in Africa, but we also have a huge return on investment. There’s no better time to make that bet than the time we live in.

“Today there’s more market stability than ever before and there’s a willingness and realization by African leaders that capital will come to where it’s welcome. So they’re trying to make an enabling environment in their markets and in their countries to attract foreign investments.”

The billionaire also noted that the COVID-19 pandemic has leavened economic opportunities in Africa, particularly in the continent’s banking sector. “In the banking business, there’s a whole transformation of banking heightened by COVID-19. Now you have less than 15% of our over 20 million bank customers across Africa transacting in the bank. Most of them are transacting online, which is about 85% of 20 million customers—that’s significant,” Elumelu explained.

Acknowledging that the odds, at the moment, may not in Africa’s favour, Elumelu insisted that hope is all that is needed to emerge from COVID-19’s economic dredge.

“The difference is having economic hope, the difference is always thinking positive and knowing that tomorrow will be better than today. Don’t let your economic aspirations die with COVID,” he added.

Elumelu is right….

If you are considering a long-term investments that will yield laudable returns, Unmask NG is of the opinion that looking at the current economic condition to put one’s money to work may be regrettable.

As a smart investor, your personal circumstances should dictate your timing of investments, not the current conditions of the economy. Interestingly, financial experts like Elumelu subscribed to this school of thought.

It is however pertinent to note that while investing through a pandemic may be counterintuitive, as far as investment is concerned, it is about time in the market, not timing the market.

Elumelu, a living testimony…

The highly-revered billionaire, in 1997, led a small group of investors to take over a financially-distressed commercial bank in Lagos.

Few years after the acquisition, the acquired bank was renamed Standard Trust Bank (STB). Subsequently, STB became one of the leading financial service firms in the country, after merging with UBA.

The post COVID-19: Elemelu Has A Message For Investors appeared first on Business News in Nigeria.

While speaking at a roundtable discussion made up of African leaders, including Dr. Ngozi Okonjo – Iweala, the Special Envoy of the African Union on Covid-19 and Tidjane Thiam who is also a Covid-19 Special Envoy responsible for mobilising international economic support for Africa, the renowned billionaire admitted that Africans can be empowered to become more productive and self-reliant, as the novel coronavirus presents an opportunity to reset the continent’s economy.

“I see this pandemic as an opportunity to reset Africa,” Elumelu stated.

Elumelu’s counsel 

While pointing out that Africa has all it takes to have a competitive economy, Elumelu advocated for a martial plan that will galvanise the entire continent and make it less dependent on the ‘circularity of debt’ from developed nations, which according to him, has been a major setback.

• Mobilization: Elumelu believes that to have a functional economy in Africa, Buhari and other leaders in the continent, needs to adopt the Tony Elumelu Foundation style of mobilising people. He explained that the mobilisation also includes putting resources together. His words; “I feel that as we engage the rest of the world in providing relief, we need to look for a more fundamental solution to Africa’s challenges. I have often argued for martial plan overtime. We need to mobilise everyone. If we have a martial plan that mobilises resources to address particular issues, then we can mitigate against this constant begging for assistance. The truth is that we have resources to help mobilise people. As the founder of the Tony Elumelu Foundation, we committed to endow $100m to support young African entrepreneurs and we have been seeing the positive results this has yielded so far.”
• Electricity: The billionaire expressed a belief that the best way to ensure the stability of the macro-economic environment, empower small and medium scale enterprises (SMEs), and fix youth migration, is a reliable power supply. He said, “it is evident that if we can fix access to electricity, then we are in for a better and more resilient economy. There is an urgent need to prioritise our youths and empower our SMEs. The people who work hard need to be encouraged.”

Here’s what we think

Unmask NG understands that poverty is one of the major problems African leaders have been battling. To combat this challenge and boost economic developments, Elumelu’s counsel cannot not be taken seriously. For instance, erratic power supply is a problem in Nigeria, crippling businesses, and the economy at large. And until this lingering challenge is addressed, the chances of having a functional economy will remain slim.

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