Abuja: The Nigerian Technical Aid Corps (NTAC) has commended President Bola Tinubu for his 4-D Foreign Policy that has kept the agency alive and active.
Dr Yusuf Yakub, the Director-General of NTAC, gave the commendation on Friday in Abuja.
Yakub spoke during the deployment exercise of 21 Technical Aid Corps (TAC) volunteers to Gambia and the orientation of 15 returned volunteers from the same country.
He said that deployment was in keeping with the mandate of NTAC to deploy technical assistance to Africa, the Caribbean, and Pacific (ACP) countries.
According to him, it is in furtherance of Nigeria’s soft power diplomacy to bridge the education and professional gaps in the region.
“The agency is fully alive, thanks to President Tinubu. This is because of the foreign policy agenda, which is: Democracy, Development, Demography, and Diaspora.
“That has given us the leverage to be able to do what we are doing. In the past two years, we have achieved a lot,” he said.
Yakub said that TAC was an instrument of soft power diplomacy to serve as a tool for sending out professionals or technical aid to ACP countries.
“In the past 38 years, we have reached out to over 40 countries and have deployed over 10,000 volunteers,’ he said.
The director-general stated that his vision was for NTAC to serve as a tool for eradicating unemployment in the country and ensuring that Nigerian professionals are well-placed and productive.
“In the past two years, the agency has been deploying volunteers almost every month to different countries, and my dream is to see NTAC serve as a tool for eradicating unemployment in Nigeria.
“Due to the good track record that NTAC volunteers have left in the minds of the countries they have served, Nigeria has gained a lot of respect from these countries.
“In one of my bilateral meetings with the Minister for Health in Jamaica, they asked for more volunteers,” he said.
One of the volunteers, Dr Emmanuel Bankole, a Social Psychologist at Ekiti State University, said that as a researcher and teacher, he would be transferring the knowledge he has gathered to the students in the host country.
Bankole, also the Team Lead of the volunteers, said that they were going to the Gambia to disseminate the knowledge, skills, and talent they had gathered over the years.
“As we are going to the Gambia, we will develop our students intellectually in the next two years, train them so that at the end of our time with them, Nigeria’s name will continue to flourish, “he said.
The 21 TAC volunteers are to be deployed to the Gambian. In comparison, 15 volunteers returned from the Gambian at the NTAC Headquarters after their 24 months of service to Nigeria and humanity.
