Nigerian Governor Promises To Tackle Unemployment

Oyo State Governor, Senator Abiola Ajimobi has promised that his administration would not relent in tackling the problem of youth unemployment bedevilling the state.

Senator Ajimobi gave the promise while declaring open a two-week induction programme for the first batch of the 20,000 youths recently employed under the Youth Empowerment Scheme of Oyo State (YES-O) at the NYSC Orientation Camp, Iseyin.

The governor stressed the need for government to productively engage the unemployed youths in order to stop them from engaging in violence. The YES-O scheme was inaugurated on 1 December 2011 during which all the 20,000 youths were given letters of appointment.

According to him, “the implication of the menace of unemployment is that those of you whom we depend upon to take over from us are perpetually disgruntled with the system and stand in a good stead to rebel against it. Unemployment is like a virus that has eaten deep into the social fabrics of this nation.

“It causes social disquiet and is the harbinger of the spate of crimes, kidnapping, perennial youth unrest and the acutely unstable socio-economic structure that has bedevilled Nigeria. We must arrest this social drift if we indeed want uninterrupted peace in this country.”

The governor said that his administration was committed to the YES-O scheme in order to engage the youth in productive ventures that would take them away from crime and other destructive ventures stressing, “we do not want youths to be seen as a curse to our children but one to be relished and savoured”.

Disclosing that youths account for 60 percent of the Nigerian population which is one-third of the nation’s workforce, the governor also emphasised that “they constitute 32 per cent of unemployed people in the country. Their fate is in the hands of the government of this nation. We must act fast and provide a livelihood for these people or else, we are all endangered”.

Gov. Ajimobi, who said that government would continue to put the fate and future of the youths of the state at the front-burner of all its activities, added that it is totally unacceptable that the graduands from various higher institutions of learning end up becoming social liabilities to the parents and nation.

“For the preservation of the peace of our nation and the general well-being of our people, the youths must be factored into all the developmental plans of government. In Oyo State, this is our drive; it is our vision and God helping us, we will positively affect and phenomenally too, the slide into chaos that unemployment in Nigeria portends”, Ajimobi said.

He said that the training exercise was geared towards imparting to the youths the tenets of leadership and service, urging the participants to comport themselves in the course of the training pointing.

“The cadets that will emerge from this training will not only be ambassadors of this administration, they will be our own Marines. Like the Marines in America, the YES-O cadets will embody and typify the vision of this administration. We expect that, as our exports to the rest of the world, you will be apostles and change agents,” he said.

—Gbenro Adesina/Ibadan