- By Demola Atobaba, Ado-Ekiti
The Senate Leader, Senator Opeyemi Bamidele, has urged the youth to face the reality of the dearth of white collar jobs in the system and fully embrace vocational and entrepreneurial skills that can guarantee them breakthroughs through self- employment.
To encourage the youth, the Senator representing Ekiti Central Senatorial District, splashed a staggering sum of N10 million to empower some youth in his senatorial district to bring a slump to the spiralling unemployment rate in the state.
Senator Bamidele spoke in Ado-Ekiti, on Wednesday, during a capacity building training organised for another set of 100 youth, who were trained by the federal lawmaker in various vocations that can make them self reliant.
The youth were trained on the bill of the Senate Leader, thereby adding to the thousands of beneficiaries that had savoured vocational and entrepreneurial trainings in his senatorial district.
The trainings, which covered scopes like cassava processing, block moulding and tailoring, were undertaken in synergy with the Nigerian Institute of Oceanography and Marine Research, Lagos.
Encouraging the participants, Senator Bamidele, represented by his Senior Legislative Aide, Hon. Gbenga Banji, lamented that the high dependency ratio among Nigerian youth, largely contributed to the poverty level and lack of trust in the system.
Bamidele said the increasing joblessness and its negative consequences can only be tackled, if the youth come to the reality of the current situation in the country, that white collar jobs are no longer reliable avenue to make their lives flourish.
The federal lawmaker was emphatic that time has come for the legislative arm to forge a united front with the executive to ramp up self employment that can extricate the youth out of the quagmire of joblessness and wanton poverty.
He saluted Governor Biodun Oyebanji for making Youth Empowerment and Job Creation, as a pillar of his policy-thrust, saying several innovations in agriculture, skill acquisition and digital economy being initiated by the current government, were pointers to pragmatic and multi-pronged approaches being devised to rout unemployment.
“The situation in our country today calls for the executive and legislative arms coming together to give our youth the hope they needed and the hope is that, they should embrace vocational and entrepreneurial drives being provided for them.
“The idea of waiting for white collar jobs for so many years after graduation doesn’t work. People should sharpen their reception to self- dependence than waiting for white collar jobs that never existed. This is the reality of our situation.
“I am quite aware that some of you may not have financial wherewithal to buy all the necessary equipment to really stand to practice what you have learnt, this is where the governors and lawmakers should come in and provide the needed finance or purchase the equipment that can help you stay afloat”.
Besides the financial backing, Bamidele stated that all the trainees will be provided with the required equipment in their areas of skills, as a pragmatic approach to really tackle the unemployment menace.
“If you learn a skill and you don’t have the equipment to operate, it is still not the best way to handle the issue of unemployment. We have to be more pragmatic by providing the equipment and take off finances. These are the best ways to encourage them”.
