The need to imbibe the culture of financial literacy in the younger generation in order to save the future of Nigeria has once again come under the spotlight. It has also been observed that the increase in the issue of poverty, unemployment have been trace to the lack of financial literacy awareness in today’s youths.
It is therefore against the backdrop of this that Credit Awareness, a not-for-profit organisation established in 2008, is partnering with Ajapa World to provide a platform aimed at providing financial education for the Nigerian child and youth.
Ladi Smith, executive director, Credit Awareness while speaking at the signing of the memorandum of understanding between the organisation and Ajapa World recently in Lagos said that the move was in line with the recent central bank launched financial inclusion strategy document which discovered that children and youth plays a very significant aspect in the issue of financial inclusion.
Ladi said that credit awareness will through the signing of this MOU close the gaps of financial literacy in Nigeria by ensuring that children and youth are financially literate during their growing up stages.
According to him, “If we can actually get these children financially literate, we make them leaders and teach them to develop that entrepreneurial spirit within them and have a bigger vision for their lives.
“it’s our belief that this partnership we are signing today would be able to carry the child and youth message that we want to carry into primary schools, secondary schools and also even beyond to meet teens and get people at the university level so that by the time they are much more mature, they would have probably learnt what the past generation did not have the advantage of learning.”
Ladi further said that the slogan of Credit Awareness which is ‘safe saving, responsible borrower, be wise, be smart’ is apt adding that an aspect of this partnership is the fact that the local content element of Ajapa World will be used to replace the voluntary organisations that we have in schools and will be replicated across all the local government areas in the country.
“We are going to ensure that children will have their own local levels because we want it to cut across schools right from tertiary to the senior school so that primary school students in all the states of the federation will be able to benefit from the initiative of this Ajapa World because we are going to launch it nationally,” he said.
On his part, Akin Braithwaite, chairman, Ajapa World said that “the era we are living in is the era of knowledge” noting that the age of knowledge is going to make the distinction between Nigeria and her ability to survive in the comity of nations, stressing that the ability to be competitive in the world that is around us will solely depend on our application of knowledge within.
KELECHI EWUZIE
