By Francis Ezediuno
The Vice-President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo has stressed the need for youths to shun and fight corruption as a means of liberating the country from the shackles of poverty and misrule.
Osinbajo on Tuesday dropped this hint at the Opening ceremony of the First Regional Youth Summit of the Development Agenda for Western Nigeria (DAWN) tagged West 2040 hosted in Osogbo, the state capital.
In his speech, Osinbajo listed talent, integrity, virtue, innovation and education, as factors that are needed for any society to develop and that where such are missing, there is tendency for failure.
He emphasised that the Omoluabi ethos of virtue and hardworking was a major ingredient needed for the advancement of the youths in the region.
The vice-president encouraged youths to use the internet positively as it is a goldmine of untapped knowledge.
He submitted that the 25 years plan which the south-west region hoped to adopt had become necessary because within that period of time, Nigeria would have attained the 3rd or 4th most populated country in the world.
In his address, the governor of the State of Osun, Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola, charged youths from the south-west Nigeria to identify areas of needs, serve them and thereby earn a decent living.
Aregbesola who was the Chief Host said the aim of the summit was to chart the course of development for the region. The governor also called on the youths to gainfully engage themselves in vocational work, trading, agriculture as he maintained that for the region not to be in its present state in the next 25 years, there is need for self discovery because there was no way they were going to succeed while waiting for white collar jobs.
He revealed that in times past, the region used to grow and was identified with its own staple foods such as Lafun for Ogun state, Amala for Oyo state and Iyan for Ekiti and Ondo states, a situation which regrettably is no longer attainable.
This according to him is because people now prefer to eat rice and drink tea with bread.
“This has made the south-west region not to be able to feed itself and this is a major challenge”.
He also cautioned the youths against involving in various negative vices.
In his good will message, the Governor of Oyo state, Senator Abiola Ajimobi stated that youths have to be up and doing and embrace hard work in order to be successful in life.
Giving his own life example, he revealed that throughout his eight years sojourn in the United States of America, his parents only sent him $30 and to aid his education he had to do odd jobs like dressing of corpses to make ends meet.
On his part, he charged the youths to always show respect to elders as custodian of constituted authority.
Speaking on the behalf of the royal fathers, the Oluwo of Iwoland, Oba Abdulrasheed Akanbi hinted that in the fight against corruption, the mindset heads it all.
He urged the government to set up modalities that would see that the youths are taken off the streets.
By so doing, crimes and other social vices perpetrated by the youths and the aged would to a large extent be curbed.
The Oluwo also called on the Osun State House of Assembly to enact an Enlightenment Act which will be a standard to measure the quality of youth engagements.
