Date: 2018-04-15

A chieftain of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), in Kwara, Alhaji Mohammed Ajia Ibrahim has urged Governor Abdulfatah Ahmed to pay greater attention to youth empowerment to reduce crime in the state.

Ajia-Ibrahim made the call in Ilorin on Saturday at the 4th Kwara Youth Stakeholders Conference.

The youth conference was sponsored by Mohammed Ajia Ibrahim (MAI) Foundation.

Ajia-Ibrahim said the conference was to bring youths in the state together to fashion a way forward for the youth and the state in general.

According to him, if youths in the state were fully engaged in one vocation or the other, they would not be involved in criminal activities.

Ajia-Ibrahim, a governorship aspirant lamented that over seven out of the 12 suspects arrested in connection with the Offa armed robbery were indigenes of Kwara.

"If the government has made adequate provision for the youths of the state, they will not be involved in such dastardly crime where dozens of innocent people lost their lives," he added.

The governorship aspirant therefore called for total autonomy of local governments in the country.

He said that if local councils were autonomous, individual local council chairman will know how to engage the youth in his council area.

"If local governments are autonomous, chairmen of the council will engage the youths in one job or vocation to take them off the street and from going into crime," he said.

Ajia-Ibrahim said his foundation was passionate about youth development since the future belongs to them.

He said the youth conference was also aimed at creating awareness of the youth to take part in politics to rescue the state from total collapse.

Ajia-Ibrahim therefore called on youths in the state to vie for different political offices in 2019.

"Youths cannot continue to sit on the fence, we must take our destiny in our own hands by being actively involved in politics.

"It is time for youths in Kwara to wake up from slumber and take up the gauntlet as the future belongs to us as leaders of tomorrow," he added.

The governorship aspirant appealed to the youths to make use of the not-too-young-to-run" slogan and venture into politics with the sole aim to serve and not to loot.Ajia-Ibrahim said that the All Progressives Congress (APC)-led Federal Government and Kwara Government had failed the youths.

He, therefore, appealed to the youths to register in the ongoing voter registration across the country to enable them exercise their civic responsibility in the 2019 general elections.

"Your PVC is your weapon to vote out inept and bad government out of office.“I appeal to youths in the state to register and collect their PVC so that collectively, we shall decide our future in 2019," Ajia-Ibrahim said.