Youth empowerment, panacea to security challenges in Nigeria ― Bamidele

The Chairman Senate Committee on Judiciary, Human Rights and Legal Matters, Senator Opeyemi Bamidele, has said the country can only overcome its rising insecurity challenges through a well-designed training and empowerment policy for jobless youths.

Bamidele, an All Progressives Congress (APC), representing Ekiti Central Senatorial District, said the incessant cases of banditry, robbery, kidnapping and killings being perpetrated by youth would be halted if leaders could place a priority on the empowerment of youth through vocational and entrepreneurial training.

The APC chieftain spoke in Ado-Ekiti, the state capital on Wednesday while rounding off a three-day vocational and entrepreneurial training for 1,000 jobless youth in his senatorial district.

Bamidele, who said the programme was done in partnership with Small and Medium Enterprises Development Agency of Nigeria(SMEDAN), would open the vista of opportunities for his constituents in the entrepreneurial world to combat crime and the rising poverty in the society.

The federal lawmaker said the training, which centres around business, tailoring and baking, would imbue the participants with the right skills, business acumen and ingenuity to be able to thrive in the management of small scale businesses.

Addressing the participants, Bamidele, represented by his Senior Legislative Aide, Mr Bunmi Oguntuase, said, “80 per cent of the crimes happening in Nigeria was as a result of joblessness among our youth and government must place priority to resolving this.

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“The federal government is grappling with the issues of banditry in the Northwest, Boko Haram insurgency in the North East and kidnapping in the southwest. All these are creating restiveness and destabilising the economy because no investor will come to any environment that looks insecure.

“But with massive youth training and empowerment, some of these crises will automatically resolve without resorting to spending billions on amnesty programmes and other resolution mechanisms”.

Bemoaning the high level of joblessness in the state, Bamidele said, “I have designed five empowerments programmes for my constituents because it is one of the key projects I have for them. In Ekiti, no viable factories and companies, what we are known for is Okada riding and we have to change the narratives.

“This capacity building will take about 70 per cent off the streets of Ekiti because the APC led government of Ekiti is not also toying with its youth policy.”

The Chairman of the Ekiti West Local Government, Kareem Agunbiade, charged the participants on the need to be circumspect of the evidence-based fact that white-collar jobs are no longer fashionable and easy to seek in the country.

The LG boss said with the frightening and disturbing height of unemployment in the country, that the idea of exposing people to business opportunities has become expedient and stand out as the best way to rescue them out of the current vicious poverty level.

NIGERIAN TRIBUNE