NASENI trained 120 youths in Lokoja last week, and seeded them N50k each to launch a start-up. Series A funding. Seriously.

That means Nigeria’s First Lady Remi Tinubu’s intervention cookbook for the high-tech akara industry isn’t as dumb as the originator cracked it to be.

And it may also indicate NASENI is shelling out that peanut on account of its own niceness. After all, already in the kitty for young artisans is a bigger lumpsum: N3.6 billion of the Industrial Training Fund (ITF) and the Skill Up Artisanal (SUPA) Programme. And the seed fund here is meatier: up to N500k per artisan.

Also on offer is the Government Enterprise and Empowerment Programme (GEEP)—under the National Social Investment Programme Agency (NSIPA). Young artisans duly documented can grab the funds—not free, though. No strings attached, either.

Drilling down the pool of available funds, any artisan on the look-out will hit some more paydirt: the Artisanal and Small-scale Miners Financing Support Fund, N500k, max.

The Bank of Industry is providing that. And anyone up to it can dig in, include youth searching to gather some golden fleece from the $75 billion solid mineral deposit sitting beneath the nation.

Terms and conditions apply, too: just two guarantors.

NASENI’s Executive Vice Chairman Khalil Halilu said the goal of the Lokoja training is to help the youths get their feet in the growing construction industry.

Many also agree the exodus of artisans from across industries to the information superhighway calls for government attention.

So baiting this population from content making to getting their hands dirty has thus become a major task.

It’s probably too early to guess how much NASENI’s effort and those of other agencies can go.