The Lagos State Government has tasked local council chairmen on the need to imbibe resilience culture in anticipating, mitigating and responding to day-to-day challenges confronting the communities.
The state Commissioner for Economic Planning and Budget, Sam Egube, stated this, yesterday, at the “Resilience sensitisation workshop organised by the Lagos State Resilience Office (LASRO) for officials of the 57 local councils/local council development areas, held at Raddison Blu, Ikeja.
According to him, the development of the Lagos resilience strategy became imperative because of the need to prepare the state for the challenges associated with rapid urbanisation and exponential population growth, with a view to transforming those challenges into greater opportunities for a better quality of life for the people, and ensure judicious use of government’s meager resources.
On her part, Deputy Chief Resilience Officer, Dr. Folayinka Dania, said that the state had the capacity to grow its economy through technology with the support of young people obtaining or creating jobs in all fields.
She added that there was a need to capitalise on the young population of the state by improving access to ICT education and ICT-enabled entrepreneurial activities across the state.
“Overall, these initiatives will support livelihoods and employment, foster economic prosperity and lead to creation of tech investors and entrepreneurs.
“The initiative entails expanding the CODE Lagos programnme to feed into the development of a technology-enabled enterprise service sector for the state. This will be achieved through the design of an improved template for the current programme to ensure that the programme is fit for purpose and reaches a larger population in the city, especially the vulnerable and underserved.
“A post training mechanism will also be integrated. This expansion will require extensive fund mobilisation for securing space in underserved areas and procuring equipment and other resources.’’
