Benin City — ActionAid  Nigeria on Wednesday said it has trained and empowered not less than 2000 youths in the last two years in Edo State to check instances of illegal migration.

The Migration Programme Coordinator for Edo State ActionAID, Mrs. Chioma Eze stated this during her opening remarks of a three days capacity building training for staff of government ministries and agencies in the state to stop illegal migration and create engagements for the segment of the population susceptible to illegal migration.

She said it has been discovered that unemployment, lack of correct information and institutional capacity gap has contributed to illegal migration.

She said "it is the implementation of a migration project tagged Death to Hope project and aimed at improving socio-economic access for the youths in Edo state because we are looking at addressing the root causes of irregular migration.

"Through our surveys we discovered that unemployment is one of the key factors for irregular migration as well as lack of adequate or correct information, there is a lot of misinformation. There is a huge institutional capacity gap among the MDAs with the mandate around migration responses."

She said "We have worked with returnees to become safe migration ambassadors that have had firsthand experience of migrating irregularly and they know what it is. This training is for capacity strengthening for the government institutions so that they can do an institutional capacity needs and how they can be blocked".

She said ActonAID has been working with Ideal Development and Resources Centre (IDRC) and Kairos Youths Empowerment Initiative in the state and funded by the Italian Agency for Development Corporation.

"We have been training 69 officials from these ministries and MDAs between 18 - 35 years. We have empowered 2000 youths with vocational skill acquisition business spaces, vocational grants and also providing them with training and even beyond the vocational training.

They were grouped into cooperatives and registered officially with the state government to enable them to have access to the facilities and to be recognized to do business in the state.

Right now we are linking them to capacity building opportunities that will strengthen their MSMEs and improve the viability of their businesses. The migration project is a three years project funded by the Italian Agency for Development Corporation"