Okowa: Unemployment rate worrying… governments must design policies to engage youths

Ifeanyi Okowa, governor of Delta state, says governments at all levels must work hard to reduce unemployment as part of efforts to address insecurity.

Okowa said this on Tuesday when he received participants of course 44 of the armed forces command and Staff College, Jaji, at the government house in Asaba, the state capital.

The governor said the theme of this year’s study, ‘Enhancing National Security through Socio-economic Development’, was apt considering the harm done to the economy by insecurity and poverty.

He said several factors account for insecurity, noting that with growing unemployment in the society, the likelihood of those affected giving in to crime increased.

“Realising this, every government and sub-national government, including the local governments, must try to work hard to pull people out of unemployment and poverty,” Okowa said.

“Unfortunately, as a nation, we have a population that is growing too much, growing more than the economy of the nation.

“At the moment, we are very worried about the unemployment rate in the country. It is much higher even among the youth.

“We must ensure that we begin to design policies and programmes that would continually engage our youths.”

The governor said his administration realised this early and commenced job creation and entrepreneurship programmes for youths.

According to him, no fewer than 100,000 youths have benefited directly and indirectly from the programmes in the past six years.

Okowa added that the state government engaged youths through the various infrastructural projects being carried out in the state.

“This has helped us to build peace across the state and the entrepreneurial development across the state is growing now,” he said.

“Through the job and wealth creation office, we have raised several thousands of youths as entrepreneurs since we came in in 2015.

“We have also been training a lot of our female youths between the ages of 18 and 30 through the girl-child entrepreneurship programme. They are fully empowered and monitored, and most of them are doing very well.

“We did all these because we have come to realise that a lot of these businesses, over time, would come to take other youths out of poverty.

“We have gained a lot of peace in our state because the youths have come to see how responsible the government has been to them.

“Some of the youths are also in government as appointees and are helping to provide useful information to security agencies in order to curb insecurity.”