NAFOWA Empowers 100 Airforce Widows

NAFOWA Empowers 100 Airforce Widows

As part of its continued efforts at empowering women and youths to make them self-sufficient, the Nigerian Air Force Officers’ Wives Association (NAFOWA), yesterday, 7 June 2018 inaugurated the skills acquisition and vocational training programme at 407 Air Combat Training Group (407 ACTG) Kainji, Niger State.

During the inauguration ceremony, the NAFOWA National President, Hajiya Hafsat Sadique Abubakar, stated that the programme was targeted at widows, women and youths with the aim of exposing them to skills and trades that could be easily turned into wealth-creating enterprises. This, according to her, was to reduce unemployment among women and youths in the barracks as well as those in host communities. She stated that it was also a way of complementing the efforts by the Government at reducing unemployment in the country. “Women are the bedrock of the home, when you have women that are able to assist the family economically and support the breadwinner of the home, there is more stability and progress in the home”, she said.

The NAFOWA National President, who described the youths as the future of the nation, said that adequate training and empowerment programmes would prepare them for a better tomorrow. She disclosed that the trades being introduced during the NAFOWA programme were carefully chosen because they could be easily converted into small and medium scale enterprises. She therefore urged the participants to be serious and also take full advantage of the opportunity offered by the 10-week empowerment programme. According to her, visits to many of the past beneficiaries of the vocational programmes had indicated that most had made good use of the starter packs given to them by opening small-scale businesses and they were doing well.

In her welcome address, the NAFOWA Chairperson, Air Training Command, Mrs Nabila Idris, thanked the NAFOWA National President for choosing NAF Base Kainji as one of the beneficiary units of the skills acquisition scheme. According to her, the Base deserved such encouragement due to the contributions of its officers and airmen/airwomen to the ongoing counterinsurgency and other Internal Security operations in the country. She therefore advised the participants to remain disciplined and focused to optimize the benefits of the programme while promising to supervise and make sure the participants were fully trained and provided with the required materials.

The 10-week programme would expose about 100 participants to vocational training in areas such as tailoring and fashion designing, catering and confectioneries, makeup artistry, interior decoration and computer appreciation. Other areas are bead making, hairdressing and barbing, soap and disinfectant production as well as leather shoe and bag production. The Kainji Centre is the 8th in the series of NAFOWA Skills Acquisition and Vocational Training across the country.

The programme, which started in May 2016, has been successfully completed at the NAF Bases in Makurdi, Maiduguri, Kaduna, Lagos, Port Harcourt and Bauchi while 100 participants are currently undergoing training at NAF Base Benin. With yesterday’s inauguration, over 1000 women and youths, including those from host communities, have so far benefitted from NAFOWA’s skills acquisition programmes across NAF bases.

OLATOKUNBO ADESANYA
Air Vice Marshal
Director of Public Relations and Information
Nigerian Air Force