The senator representing Bayelsa West Senatorial District in the National Assembly, Seriake Dickson, has empowered no fewer than 100 women drawn from the ward across Sagbama and Ekeremor local government areas with new tricycles and canoes to enable them to become self-reliant.
Dickson, who is a former governor of Bayelsa State, said the distribution of the tricycles and canoes was done in collaboration with the National Institute of Cultural Orientation (NICO) that conducted entrepreneurial skills training for the beneficiaries.
Represented by Bodilong Ogugubeni, Dickson said the empowerment programme for women was the first phase of his entrepreneurial training and empowerment programme, promising that in no distant time, he would extend the programme to youths from the area.
He said: “It has always been my desire to ensure that lives of women and youths are developed. I have brought these tricycles and canoes to help our women to be self-reliant. So, I urge you to use the knowledge you have acquired from the training to improve yourselves.”
Also speaking, the executive secretary of NICO, Ado Mohammed Yahuza, represented by his Director of Research and Documentation, Michael Ekoko, said the aim of the programme was to strengthen the place of culture in Nigeria’s economic development agenda.
He said: “In collaboration with the office of the senator representing Bayelsa West, we are promoting Nigeria’s cultural practice and orientating the general public towards harnessing our various resources which are essential to boosting our economic capacity.
“I do believe that the beneficiaries will put all the skills and knowledge they have acquired during the training to good use by starting up small scale businesses to generate income and employ labour, and in so doing contribute to the Nigerian economy.”
Presenting a paper entitled ‘Understanding culture as a catalyst in national development’, the Head of Department of Theatre Arts, University of Africa, Toru-Orua, Barclays Ayakroma, advised the beneficiaries of the tricycles and canoes ot to sell them, adding that the best way to grow a business was to start small and grow big.
He said: “The reason we are part of this programme is to discourage you from the culture of selling start-ups given to you for your own economic development.
“Take some transport companies for example, they started with one vehicle and after some years they expanded to over 100 vehicles.
