By Hussaina Yakubu

Actionaid Nigeria has trained 120 young people in six states on planning and formulation skills for effective advocacy and monitoring of government policies.

Mr Celestine Odo, Manager Governance at Actionaid Nigeria, made the disclosure at the opening of policy influencing training for 20 youth in Kaduna on Tuesday.

He said the program will help link the youths with existing opportunities, and strengthen their capacity and skills to influence policies in their states.

Odo said that the training would hold in all the six selected states, namely, Enugu, Akwa-Ibom, Lagos, Abuja, Borno and Kaduna.

According to him, the training is under the Youth Organizing and Leadership (Light Touch) programme, a three year project funded by Danish International Development Agency, to mobilize young people and organizations for progressive social change.

“It aims at enhancing young people’s power to influence public expenditure towards gender responsive public service delivery through progressive taxation.

“It is also to strengthen capacity and knowledge of young people on issues of public finance, tax and GRPS and how to get government to be responsive.

“We gather the youth to generate their own agenda through facilitation and how they engage with government to provide services to them that cut across different sectors,” he said.

According to him, the policy influencing training is a deliberate and systematic process of shaping policies, practices and behavior of stakeholders, particularly decision makers.

“We are expected to build a core of young people to drive advocacy initiatives in their locations while building sustainable organising models for youth groups,” he added.

Odo stressed that the training would enable the youth to better understand the importance of getting involved in decision making processes.

“The overall aim is to facilitate learning processes where participants learn and acquire new tools, opinions and enhance their skills on advocacy and public policy influencing for social transformation.”

Mr Abubakar Mohammed, Program Assistant, Connected Development, an NGO, urged Nigerians to take advantage of the Freedom of Information Act to ask questions about government policies and programmes.

A participant, Grace John said the training will avail them with information on how policies are made and how to track implementation.

She urged the youth to get involved in policy making, so as to get the changes they desired.