FIC Report (Ekiti State) – 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, donated the 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 youths who were trained by the federal lawmaker in various vocations that could make them self reliant.
The youths 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 could only be tackled if the youth come to the reality of the current situation in the country.
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.
Besides the financial backing, Bamidele stated that all the trainees would be provided with the required equipment in their areas of skills as a pragmatic approach to tackle the unemployment menace.
Signed
Omotoso Julius Bunmi
ACEO&PRO
23/07/2025
