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SPEECH DELIVERED BY THE GOVERNOR OF EKITI STATE,

DR. KAYODE FAYEMI AT THE OPENING CEREMONY FOR THE TRAINING OF 500 UNSKILLED AND SEMI SKILLED

VOLUNTEERS

IN ADO EKITI ON FRIDAY, 18TH NOVEMBER 2011

PROTOCOLS

I am delighted to be here for the opening ceremony of yet another

training programme that will take 500 of our youths out of

unemployment and poverty.

This is the third time youths would be gathered for such an

entrepreneurial cum leadership training of this nature. The earlier

trainings which produced 5,000 Volunteer Corps were for graduates of

Colleges of Education, Polytechnics and Universities.

The experiment has proved a huge success as the monster of youth

unemployment is now being pushed to a weaken defensive.

Engagement of 5,000 otherwise jobless individuals is a novel

approach we wish to stretch to its fullness. The government has now

decided to shift its attention to secondary and vocational school

leavers. While not attempting to encourage incidences of drop out

 

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from school system, we should be honest enough to

admit that some graduates of secondary schools are better introduced

to vocational skills that would enable them to maintain worthwhile

and stable life that is devoid of the social consequences of semi-

literacy in view of their glaring inability for hard academic stresses.

This training has therefore been structured to focus on skill acquisition

and entrepreneurial-ship expected to ignite the productive tendencies

of the trainees.

You will recall the statistics on Nigerian unemployment I gave during

the opening ceremony of the first batch Group B of the Volunteer

corps at Ise on 11th October, 2011. The figure of 32.5 million

unemployed Nigerians as released by the office of the Statistician

General of the Federation then should be a source of concern to those

who love the future of this country. I am indeed very distraught that

this figure represents 48% of the population of a country of about 150

million citizens which ironically has enough resources to make her

citizens fully and gainfully engaged.

Distinguished ladies and gentlemen, I am further shocked by another

disclosure by the National Bureau of Statistics on Tuesday, November

15 that unemployment in the first half of 2011 has increased to

23.9%. This is an increase of 1.8 million new entrants into the labour

market. Even in the South West Region which has the lowest index,

Ekiti’s figure is not the least and this unacceptable to us.

 

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This is why this government would continue to do

everything possible within its glaringly lean resources to frontally

address the problems of unemployment as a core social challenge in

the state. I therefore call on people of goodwill, high net worth

individuals, non-governmental organizations and corporate

organizations to please collaborate with this administration to attack

the very foundation of poverty in our land which unarguably, is

unemployment. Apart from creating jobs themselves, they should as a

matter of fact make requests and engage these Volunteers

productive ventures.

I like to commend the Job Creation and Employment Agency for

creating another opportunity for our youths to actualize their dreams

and make a statement in their generation. I also congratulate the

participants for making the list for the programme at this time. I

challenge you to make the best out of this training and justify the

huge investment which the state Government has put into the

programme.

Let me warn here that any participant who demonstrate any form of

unseriousness would be disengaged at any stage of the training. Our

resolve to address unemployment is a considered path of duty and

honour deliberately chosen to dent the poverty structure in our dear

state. While the government has taken it as a responsibility to engage

Volunteer Corps in one form of public service engagement or the

 

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other, the real objective is to make them privately

productive and thus contributors to the economic growth of the state.

Distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, it is now my pleasure to

declare this ceremony open to the glory of God almighty and the

benefit of our people.

Thank you and God bless.