Globally renowned energy solutions provider, the French Institute of Petroleum (IFP), has offered immediate employment to 14 of the 40 Niger Delta youths who just completed their training at the IFP Training School in Paris, France.
Of the 14, IFP offered direct automatic employment to the best graduating Nigerian student, who will take up full time employment at IFP’s headquarters in France.
The French firm also confirmed that it will facilitate the placement in full employment the other 13 youths that also excelled in character and in learning in two of its partner firms in Nigeria, namely Total Nigeria and Halliburton.
Of the 40 trainees deployed to the French school by the Amnesty Office, 20 delegates had advanced training in Geosciences, Reservoir Engineering while the other 20 delegates were trained in Oil & Gas Production Engineering.
At the formal graduation event of the 40 delegates in France, the Special Adviser to the President on Niger Delta and Chairman, Presidential Amnesty Programme, Hon. Kingsley Kuku, lauded IFP for its quality training.
He said the Amnesty Office has since keyed into President Goodluck Jonathan’s vision of providing three million new jobs for qualified Nigerians in the next 12 months.
“In line with Mr. President’s vision and directive, my office will no longer give training jobs to any firm that would not guarantee the gainful employment of a minimum of 50 per cent of the persons they trained. We have long gone beyond training our youths for unemployment,” Kuku said.
“It is on this note that I want to thank IFP for finding 14 of the Nigerian youths that we gave them to train worthy in character and in learning for immediate employment. We are grateful and I shall speedily communicate this good news to my boss, Mr. President”, an elated Kuku enthused.
The Special Adviser however urged IFP to also help facilitate job placement for the other delegates who graduated alongside the 14 that were offered jobs.
In his remark, the Director-General of the IFP Training Centre, Mr. Jean-Luc Karnik, praised the Niger Delta youths for being exceptional students.
“All the reports available to me indicate very glaringly that these students, all 40 of them, were exceptional during their training at the IFP training centre and because they excelled all round, we did not have problems securing jobs for 14 of them immediately. Other than the ones that we have found jobs for, IFP feels very proud to recommend these graduates to potential employers. They got the very best of training here,” the IFP Director General said.
A few months ago, another French firm, Schneider Electric Industries of France, also facilitated the employment of the 29 Niger Delta youths that completed their training in power generation in one of the firm’s training facilities that was recently named after the late Nigerian nationalist, Major Isaac Adaka Boro, in Grenoble, France.
Of the 29 youths, 15 were offered direct employment by Schneider Electric to work in their facilities in Nigeria while six of them were placed in gainful employment in firms currently partnering with Schneider to execute projects in Nigeria.
The remaining eight, who voluntarily chose to become entrepreneurs, are being assisted by Schneider through the firm’s internal micro-credit scheme to become contractors and services providers in the critical power sub-sector.
