I’m Ready to Empower Youths within My Domain, Says Olota

Femi Ogbonnikan in Abeokuta

The new Olota of Ota, Ogun State, Oba Adeyemi Obalanlege, has promised to ensure that youths within the Ota community benefit immensely from the industrialisation the area is endowed with.

Fielding questions from journalists at a get-together organised by committee of friends to honour him as the 14th Olota of Ota weekend, the monarch who was once a journalist, promised that his reign would witness a massive empowerment of unemployed youths within his domain as a measure to curb young men from taking to crimes.

According to him, “I am ready to engage youths with employment as a measure to take them off the streets from joining bad gangs. So, this is the time to liberate them.

“Though we appreciate people coming from outside to contribute to the industrial growth and development of our community but I can’t imagine Ota, being the industrial hub of the country and our teeming unemployed youths can’t benefit from the industrialisation our various communities within Aworiland, because we can see people coming from outside the community to get jobs here.”

However, the monarch laid the blame on politicians as being responsible for the growing rate of unemployment of youths within the community, stressing that youths are being used for electoral malpractices, instead of engaging them in meaningful livelihood.
“A couple of weeks ago I ascended this throne. I have been talking to a lot of well-meaning people within and outside on various ways they could be of immense help to engage the growing number in unemployed youths within the community.

“I approached them at Crescent University, Abeokuta, where I once lectured and they have promised to assist us in training these unemployed youths to a standard that they can be employed by companies located within our community. And in few months to come, you would see changes in our youths”, said Oba Obalanlege.

Besides, he said once the training programmes are fully implemented, any youth found wanting or formenting trouble within the community would be handed over to the police for prosecution.

Meanwhile, the first class monarch advocated the resuscitation of the House of Chiefs as a bi-camera legislature in each of the states of the Federation as the only way to assign roles to traditional rulers in the country, instead of accusing them of dabbling into partisan-politics.