Femi Ogbonnikan in Abeokuta
The new Olota of Ota, Ogun State, Oba Adeyemi Obalanlege, has called for 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.
The monarch contended that doing so would halt heaping unnecessary blames or degrading the traditional institution of any wrongdoing in the course of their assigned roles.
Besides, while fielding questions from newsmen at a recent get-together organised by committee of friends in his honour as the 14th Olota of Ota, the monarch who was a trained journalist, promised that his reign would witness a massive empowerment of unemployed youths within his domain as a measure to curb young men taking to crimes. Also, he promised to ensure that youths within his Ota domain benefit immensely from industrialisation his community is endowed with.
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 can’t benefit from, because we can see people coming from outside the community to get jobs here.â€
However, the monarch blamed politicians for the growing rate of unemployment of youths within the community, stressing that the youths are being used for electoral malpractices, instead of engaging them with meaningful means of livelihood.
“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 they can be employed by companies that are located within our community. And in few months to come, you would see changes in our youthsâ€, said Oba Obalanlege.
Besides, he said once these training programmes are fully implemented and any youth found wanting, or causing trouble within the community would be handed over to the police for prosecution.
