In Adamawa, the conversation about insecurity often begins with guns, gangs, kidnapping and banditry.
Bincike International wants to draw attention to something that comes earlier: what happens when a young person has a skill, but no work.
The organisation believes that closing that gap could become part of the fight against insecurity. 
Its answer is OneDelegate, a new digital platform designed to connect trained artisans with customers who need everyday services such as plumbing, electrical repairs, carpentry, gas supply and waste disposal.
Launched in Yola, the platform is being positioned as both an employment intervention and an attempt to create a more reliable path from skills training to income.
That distinction matters in a state where young people can pass through training programmes without necessarily finding a customer afterwards.
For Bincike International’s Executive Director, Dr Elisha Bello, that gap is not merely an economic problem.
He said an internal assessment by the organisation found that many young people with employable skills remained without jobs, leaving some vulnerable to recruitment into criminal activities.
According to Bello, the assessment identified a relationship between unemployment and the involvement of some youths in gangs locally known as Shilla boys, as well as banditry and kidnapping.
“We are linking them with those who need their services in the state, and we plan to scale it up in other states as well,” Bello said.
The proposition is simple, but its implications are much bigger than the application itself.
A young person who spends months learning plumbing still needs someone willing to pay for plumbing. Without that connection, the certificate may become another document in a drawer rather than a source of income.
Bincike says OneDelegate is designed to create that connection.
The organisation’s Director of Innovation and Strategy, Jimuruna Leonard, said the platform was developed after identifying a persistent weakness in skills-development programmes.
“It’s going to address a lot of unemployment, and there are a lot of NGOs also that are training persons, but there is no way to deploy those skills and generate income. So this goes a long way in addressing unemployment,” Leonard said.
The platform allows artisans to register after screening and receive requests from customers.
Customers can track service providers and review them after jobs are completed, while artisans can also review customers.
The arrangement is intended to introduce accountability into transactions that have traditionally depended heavily on personal referrals and informal trust.
But Bincike’s security argument raises a question that the platform itself cannot answer.
How much does employment actually reduce the appeal of criminal recruitment?
The organisation has linked unemployment to vulnerability to crime, but OneDelegate’s success will ultimately depend on whether it can produce enough regular income to make that alternative meaningful.
That means registration numbers alone will not tell the full story.
A thousand artisans on an application do not necessarily mean a thousand people have found jobs.
The more revealing figures would be how many receive requests, how frequently they work, how much they earn and how many remain active after several months.
Those are the numbers that would show whether the platform is creating livelihoods or simply creating another database of unemployed people.
Bincike’s model attempts to address the demand side as well.
The organisation launched OneDelegate in Yola after research indicated stronger demand for such services in metropolitan areas.
According to The Gazette News Nigeria, the organisation plans to use Yola as the starting point before expanding the platform across Adamawa and eventually into other parts of Nigeria.
That expansion will bring another challenge.
A platform intended to address exclusion cannot itself become another service available mainly to people with smartphones, data and reliable internet.
Bincike says it is already planning for that problem.
The organisation plans to introduce a USSD option for residents who cannot access the application.
It also plans OneDelegate Hop, a call-in service through which residents can make requests by telephone, with those requests relayed to registered artisans in their communities.
The organisation says GPS tracking will also allow registered service providers to serve customers beyond Yola.
The approach is particularly important for rural communities, where the digital infrastructure required for app-based services may be weaker.
Bincike is also trying to build trust around transactions.
The organisation said chats on the platform are encrypted and that customers will have access to a customer service line if an agent becomes unreachable.
For payments, it said OneDelegate uses an escrow-style system in which customers fund a wallet and release payment after a job has been completed.
Selected services will also allow payment on arrival.
Gas distribution will operate under a separate model involving partnerships with gas companies and trained agents.
According to Bincike, agents moving specified volumes of gas could receive discounts instead of conventional transport costs.
The organisation said it would not manufacture equipment such as protective gas-cylinder racks itself. Instead, designs would be transferred to private manufacturers, while the platform concentrates on connecting agents with customers.
OneDelegate is also being opened to organisations already conducting skills training.
Bincike said these organisations, described as “master artisans”, could bring trainees for certification and registration on the platform without paying registration fees.
The organisations would continue to bear the logistics costs of training.
That could provide an important link between existing development programmes and the marketplace Bincike is building.
Instead of ending with a graduation ceremony, a skills programme could potentially end with a young person entering a system where customers are actively looking for the service they have learned to provide.
For people displaced by conflict, the prospect is particularly significant.
Chimda Musa, Executive Director of the Rural Agricultural Transformation and Empowerment Initiative, said OneDelegate could help internally displaced persons who have acquired skills but remain jobless.
“This is long overdue, and I think these are some of the things that will take out most project participants out of poverty, especially those in the livelihood aspect,” Musa said.
“Most of them are jobless. But with this, I think they will be linked, and they will gain their source of livelihood.”
Development workers at the launch also urged donor agencies and NGOs to support platforms that can continue producing income after individual projects end.
Their concern reflects a wider development challenge.
Short-term distributions can meet an immediate need. Training can provide a skill.
But neither automatically provides a customer.
OneDelegate is attempting to fill that third space.
The Adamawa State Government has also expressed support for the initiative.
Usman Moddibo Saleh, Director of the Donor Agency Department at the State Ministry of Planning Commission, who represented the Executive Chairman, said the initiative aligns with government priorities around employment, education and gender-related development.
“It will help the people of Adamawa. So we really also call on people of Adamawa to give them maximum support, so that we achieve the aim and objectives of them being in Adamawa State,” Saleh said.
For Bincike, the larger ambition is to make legitimate work easier to find.
That could have implications for insecurity, but it should not be confused with a complete solution to it.
Unemployment is only one factor that can make young people vulnerable to criminal recruitment. Poverty, social exclusion, weak institutions, peer pressure and insecurity itself can all play a role.
OneDelegate cannot resolve those problems through an application.
What it can attempt to do is remove one vulnerability: the gap between possessing a marketable skill and having someone willing to pay for it.
That makes the platform’s first test economic before it becomes security-related.
Can it generate enough transactions?
Can customers trust its artisans?
Can artisans earn consistently?
Can rural residents access the service?
And can the organisation sustain the platform after the launch excitement disappears?
Those questions will determine whether OneDelegate becomes another development project or a functioning piece of Adamawa’s economic infrastructure.
For a young artisan, the distinction could be profound.
The difference between having a skill and having a livelihood may be as simple as receiving the next phone notification: a customer needs your service.
That is the bet Bincike International is making.
And in Adamawa, where unemployment and insecurity frequently intersect, it is a bet worth watching.
