Okowa meets Orode Uduaghan, others; restates commitment to youth empowerment
To consolidate on the success stories of his administration, Delta State Governor, Dr Ifeanyi Okowa on Sunday met with a team of young entrepreneurs led by Ms Orode Uduaghan where he harped on the need for beneficiaries of entrepreneurship and empowerment programmes to be mentored to ensure that desired results are achieved.
The governor who received the team at the Government House, Asaba, commended the young entrepreneurs for their commitment to changing the stories of Deltans with their different programmes where they train and empower the people, saying, “there is the need to monitor and mentor our youths in their entrepreneurial businesses.”
“What you are doing as young entrepreneurs is worthwhile, I will get you people involved in our programmes to talk to graduates of our entrepreneurial programmes, so as to improve their confidence,” he stated, adding, “a lot of our youths need people to talk to them, to get them out of where they are and the right set of people to do this is their peers.”
Governor Okowa who expressed joy that youths of the state have come together to partner on how to create job opportunities for the youths and women, stated, “In our job creation programmes, we have found out that it is not just to expose the people to entrepreneurial learning and skills but, to be role models and mentors to them so as to encourage them to be successful; we became role models for our today youths to impact in them the necessary skills to survive in the business world.”
He continued, “we will encourage entrepreneurial studies in all our tertiary institutions to prepare our graduates to become entrepreneurs while encouraging our technical school students to proceed to the polytechnics, improve their skills and utilise their technical and entrepreneurial skills after graduation.”
Ms Uduaghan had said the team comprises young entrepreneurs with innovative ideas to train other youths as entrepreneurs.
She disclosed that they were in Asaba to intimate Governor Okowa of the outcome of their youth stakeholders’ forum held in Warri and to partner with government “to change the narrative of the average Deltan youth.”
“We are a set of Delta youths who studied abroad with a lot of innovative ideas who want to mentor our peers, create a platform for them to become innovative entrepreneurs,” she said.