By MAUREEN OKON

The Nigerian Technical Aid Corps (NTAC) says it has opened up four new countries for Technical Aid Corps (TAC) engagement to bridge both the educational and professional gaps in Africa.

Dr. Yusuf Yakub, the Director General (D-G) of NTAC, made this known at a media parley to commemorate his two years in office on Friday, in Abuja.

Yakub named the countries as Grenada, Equatorial Guinea, South Sudan and Zanzibar.

Yakub said that apart from the four countries requesting for volunteers, NTAC is already preparing some other countries for the TAC programme.

The D-G said that in the last two years, he had introduced a new initiative to help fight illegal migration, which engages young Nigerians to travel through illegal means.

He said that there was an initiative to turn NTAC into a hub for exporting Nigeria’s man-power to countries in need

According to him, such manpower will serve as salary earners in countries in need of their skills and their professional knowledge.

“In the past two years we have open up TAC engagement in Grenada in the Southern Caribbean, and we have Equatorial Guinea, South Sudan and Zanzibar.

“These are the new countries that we have opened up relationship with in the past two years.

“We are preparing to deploy volunteers to these countries. But until we deploy to these countries we will not put them in our radar.

“Another new initiative is to turn NTAC into a hub for the export of our man-power not only for free but for money.

“This was done side by side with our agency’s operation and the soft power diplomacy of President Bola Tinubu,” he said. (NAN)