Bayelsa Leader Pleads For Youth Empowerment

A community leader in Diebu community in Southern Ijaw Local Government Area of Bayelsa State, Anthony Goodnews, has advocated for empowerment of youths to checkmate not only juvenile delinquency among teenagers but also curb criminal tendency among young adults.

Towards this end, Mr Goodnews pleaded passionately with Governor Seriake Dickson to make youth empowerment a priority of his administration.

Speaking to journalists in Yenagoa, Goodnews argued that lack of empowerment and absence of employment opportunities was responsible for some negative attitudes among youths in the state including illegal petrol refining, militancy and piracy, noting that without tackling these monster head on, all the talk about achieving serene atmosphere especially in the rural areas would continue to be mere rhetoric..

The community leader lamented that in a situation where a young man has finished his tertiary education and he cannot get employment as well as empowerment to start any small business venture, the only course open to him is to engage in anything to survive.

“You have finished your education, but you find yourself working in local refining; that is not encouraging to other youths or you are qualified, but you are a speedboat driver; that is the cause of militancy in the Niger Delta,” Goodnews said.

He also urged the Federal Government to look into ways of harnessing the potential of local refiners of petrol rather than engage in crushing their ventures by building local refineries to empower youths in the region.

Another way out of the logjam, Goodnews stated is for the state government to seriously consider the employment of its qualified graduate youths in the state civil service rather than the practice whereby opportunities are given to their counterparts from other parts of the country to be employed in the state civil service.