G20 Partners Oyo on Job Creation

By Dipo Olowookere

A multinational youth entrepreneurship group called the G20 Youths Entrepreneur Alliance (YEA) has promised to work with the Oyo State Government to create employment opportunities for the teeming youths in the State.

The Director General, Citizens Enterprises, Mr Jean-Louis Gregoire, who led the Youths Entrepreneur Alliance members on a courtesy visit to the state Governor, Mr Abiola Ajimobi said the group was in the state to foster sustainable ways that would help to set up youths empowerment schemes to reduce poverty among the young ones.

According to Mr Gregoire, “Our objective is to look into how to set up the mechanism that will provide mass employment opportunities through entrepreneurial-driven schemes.

“We would be taking from the pool of young undergraduates in the universities to benefit from the scheme and they would be empowered through entrepreneurial education, easy access to start up funds for small scale businesses.”

Mr Gregoire said the empowerment scheme would be what he called ‘top-down microeconomic scheme’ which he believed would cater for 85 percent job creation in the first quarter of commencement year.

He went further to say that female-youths would be specially focused in the programme as females, according to him played prominent roles in family building.

The DG said, “This top-down microeconomic scheme will lead to the creation of 85 percent jobs in the first quarter of the starting year and our major focus would be the female-youths that will give multiplier effects to the society.

“We so much appreciate the gesture of Oyo State government for bringing forth so many programmes to help the youths overcome poverty and be self-sustaining”

In his remark, Governor Ajimobi said his government had done so much to alleviate the sufferings occasioned by unemployment in the State, saying that youths were trained and provided with materials needed to set them up in business.

The Governor said the state agricultural empowerment scheme, named ‘Agric-Oyo’ was also set up for economic diversification having in mind the youths as major beneficiaries.

Mr Ajimobi said “Oyo State is strategically positioned to gain from Youths Entrepreneur Alliance as we have the population that can better benefit from the scheme.

“In terms of economic diversification, Oyo State would reap so much gain as it has the largest landmass targeted at large scale agriculture.

“We are not in want of programmes and at the same time, we are in need of more, we want to encourage and teach our youths how to fish rather than give them fish, we pledge our support for this programme as we can see clearly, it will benefit our youths and the society at large,” the Governor explained.