… As SMEDAN trains secondary, primary school teachers on entrepreneurship in Kaduna***

Terminal handling giant, the APM Terminals Apapa, has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with an indigenous firm, FREEE Recycle Ltd., to recycle used tyres.

The Terminal Manager, APM Terminals Apapa, Mr Steen Knudsen, said this in a statement on Tuesday in Lagos.

Knudsen said APM Terminals Apapa had carried out a successful trial by using pavement blocks produced out of recycled and compressed used tyres for exterior flooring in December 2021.

He said the MoU was in furtherance of the company’s contribution to reducing the harmful effects of industrial wastes on the environment.

“We are reducing the environmental footprint in Nigeria, and I am super excited we have FREEE Recycle Limited to partner with.

“We are recycling the tyres into materials that can be used in other parts of the supply chain.

“It is important to partner with companies that have different expertise to complement our efforts to ensure that together, we reduce the environmental footprint in our businesses,” he said.

The Procurement Manager, APM Terminals Apapa, Chinyere Adenaike, said the terminal operator remained committed to sustainability and protection of the environment.

“We are committed to always taking constant care to ensure responsible operational practices that minimise, reduce and prevent negative environmental impact in the community.

“At the leadership level at Apapa, we have committed to a thorough review of our capital investments in equipment to ensure it is in line with our Maersk global ambition of zero Carbon dioxide emission by 2040.

“The commitment is not just on equipment, we are also looking into the lifecycle of our rolling stock, from cradle to grave.

“We are happy to have partners who share our ambition towards the environment, and a port authority that firmly supports these initiatives,” Adenaike said.

The Managing Director, FREEE Recycle Ltd., Ifedolapo Runsewe, commended APM Terminals Apapa for taking the lead in reducing solid waste in the country.

He noted that the MoU would enhance a collaborative effort in recycling tyres into reusable products.

“This MoU will allow both parties to work together towards recycling of tyres, and we are excited that APM Terminals decided to be at the forefront of this.

“We will be working with them for the next five years to ensure that all tyres generated within the facility are recycled into reusable products and re-used.

“We hope that more organisations will come on board,” she said.

The Chief Operating Officer of FREEE Recycle, Mr Theopilus Okoyomon, said the dangers tyres posed to the environment were that they led to emissions of Carbon dioxide and created a breathing space for mosquitoes.

“APM Terminals is leading the way, more like a clarion call to all other companies to step forward,”; he said.

A representative of the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA), Maryann Okeke, commended the tyre recycling initiative.

“We do get a lot of tyres from Lagos channels.

Our commitment to consistent dredging has opened us to solid waste that can be recycled.

“We are having discussions with the Lagos State government and carrying out sensitisation on the removal of solid waste from the harbour,” she said.

In another development, the Small, Medium, Enterprises Development Agency of Nigeria (SMEDAN) in partnership with the Kaduna State Government, on Tuesday began a two-day training of teachers of entrepreneurship in secondary and primary schools.

The training is on entrepreneurship in the state.

The newsmen report that the entrepreneurship teachers cut across the 23 Local Government Areas (LGAs) of the state.

The capacity building for the teachers was under the  SMEDAN’s Mind Shift Entrepreneurship (MEP) Programme.

The MEP is designed to engage vibrant students and youths, to channel their skills into productive venture creation and management of their own businesses.

In his address, the Director-General of SMEDAN, Mr Olawale Fasanya, said the programme was designed to enhance the capacity of the teachers, who would, in turn, prepare the pupils, and students and convert them into entrepreneurs.

Fasanya was represented by Dr Yinka Fisher, Deputy Director, Partnership and Coordination Department of the agency.

He stressed that there was a lot of anxiety and uncertainty among Nigerian students about their future, following the dearth of opportunities in the employment market and their lack of entrepreneurial skills to go into new business ventures.

“The World Bank recently predicted that there will be an additional injection of 40 million people joining the economically active group by 2040 in Sub-Saharan Africa.

“Given the most promising economic performance within the region, there is no way regular employment will cope with this number of people entering the unemployment market,” he said.

Fasanya stated that the imperative was to support young people with education and training that would promote employment generation and wealth creation.

“The programme is to provide access to functional and hands-on entrepreneurship and financial literacy and community service education to every primary and secondary student in Nigeria.

“The MEP Programme is driven through two National School Entrepreneurship Programme (N-SEP) for primary and secondary schools and the Tertiary Institution Entrepreneurship Development programme (TINEDEP).

“We have gotten the buy-in of the universities, polytechnics, Colleges of Education and regulatory authorities such as NUC, NBTE and NCCE has endorsed the programme,” Fasanya said.

He said entrepreneurship teachers must be entrepreneurs themselves because one could not give what he did not have.

“The agency has carefully designed teacher’s manual to guide them on how to hand-hold the pupils and students towards the entrepreneurial journey.

“The teacher’s manual is provided to assist entrepreneurship into the pupils and students, to guide and assist teachers in inculcating the culture and spirit of the teaching of the business of entrepreneurship,” he said.

Fasanya urged the Kaduna government to take ownership of the programme and step it down to all primary and secondary schools in the state.

Also, Gov. Nasir El- Rufai commended SMEDAN for the MEP programme, noting that the training would enhance the teachers’ capacity on entrepreneurship, which would be impacted to the students.

The governor, represented by Dr. Yusuf Saleh, Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Business Innovation and Technology, said Nigeria’s population was on the increase on a daily basis and the nation, unable to afford employment for all graduates.

He said the state government was working on introducing technical education at the primary school level, to catch them at a young age.

“We are in partnership with AKK gas pipeline project to see how we can train our young people on welding and fabrication; we are also in collaboration with the agricultural organisation, among others, on the training of our young people.

“We also organise training to promote what our medium, small and micro enterprises producers are doing,” he said.

The governor urged  SMEDAN to partner with the newly-established  Senior Secondary Schools Education Commission,  to enable the expansion of the programme to other states.

Also, the Principal of Rimi College, Mr Andrew Dodo, said most students often had the mindsets and ambitions of working in big offices and government parastatals.

He said with the realities on the ground, the students needed to be updated and trained on entrepreneurship skills, to make them self-reliant and independent at the advent of population increase, which translated to job scarcity.

“We are, for long, supposed to be teaching our children on what they will contribute to our country; if they think otherwise, we will continue to be battling with unemployment as a nation,” Dodo said.