Youth empowerment is the road to peace in Abia – Gov Orji.

Abia State Governor The odore Orji, in this interview, speaks on his government’s youth empowerment programme, the merger by the opposition parties, Federal Government’s amnesty to Boko Haram among other issues. Excerpt:

What is driving the Abia State Youth Empowerment Summit initiative that will hold shortly?

What actually is driving the Abia Youth Empowerment Summit (A-YES) initiative is that we realised the potency and potentials of the youths, they can be an asset and they can also be destructive if you do not manage them well. And that is why we decided to galvanise the youth energy, to empower them so that they will be very useful and helpful to the society. What gave us this experience was the kidnapping issue.

During the trying times of kidnapping, we did amnesty and we discussed with the kidnappers one-on-one and were discovered that all of them were youths, very young people and most of them told us their grievances. Some of them said it was because of lack of job, some mentioned family problems, some mentioned other problems. theodore-orji

So we got this idea that if you can get the youths together, particularly, those who are not doing anything and empower them, even if you cannot give them jobs because it is not easy to give all of them government jobs, you can at least give them skills, you can give them implements with which they can feed or fend for themselves. It was this encounter I would say increased my passion to take care of the youths, to make them to be useful to the society and to help us also to maintain the needed security and peace.

The state is set for the youth summit. What is the expectation?
This is a follow up to the other ones that we have been doing. We have carried out this initiative at Ohafia, Abia North, we have done it in Osisioma, Abia South, we now want to do it in Umuahia, Abia Central. So we want to go round the senatorial zones, then we start going town by town. We have experimented with those zones and have seen that it is very helpful. Now if you give an unemployed youth a brand new car, which is part of the things we give, the person can feed himself and his family with such empowement if he is resourceful.

We give them tricycles and they can feed themselves with it; if you give them training in skills acquisition, they can fend for themselves; if we send them to the liberation farms that we are doing, the best will come because they will produce food, feed us and feed themselves and will be in a position also to establish their own farms. I know that a docile youth is very restive, but if they are occupied meaningfully, they will be beneficial not only to Abia State but the society.

What are the sectors or areas that you have touched at the moment or would want to cover over time?
I am covering the transport sector, agricultural sector, technical aspect sector, education as well as the commerce sector. These are the areas we are covering at the moment, but we intend to expand the scope. We focus mainly where the youths are mostly needed. In the education sector, we provide scholarships.

During your recent visit to the US, you delivered a paper in John Hopkins University on governors and their functions and our federation? What was your position?

Yes, I delivered the paper in John Hopkins university which is a top range university. They invited me, I didn’t canvass for it. I didn’t choose the topic, they gave me the topic on good governance. I used that unique opportunity also to woo investors to come and for sure the lecture was a window opened for most investors that were present. We talked about good governance, functions of governors and I gave a detailed account of functions of the governors, drawing from the constitution.

Looking from the prism of what you have been able to achieve so far, what do you consider your greatest achievements?

My achievements are numerous and I don’t know where to start or end, but the major one which I continue to tell people was my ability to liberate Abians, to express their opinions and be participants in their government. Secondly, I have been able to bring peace in Abia.

It is no longer news that before now the people were polarised, many were living in Abuja and refused to come back, those living in Lagos refused to come back and these were prominent people in the state, stakeholders, those who were founders of this state, some who founded the state and are old and could not travel outside were made to stay in their homes without coming out but right now, I have been able to bring all of them together as one family. When we do this youth empowerment, you will see the calibre of people that will come. There is optimism in the air about the All Progressive Congress (APC) merger and even in Abia state the opposition say they will floor the PDP through the APC platform. How possble?

How are they going to dislodge the PDP? This is politics, people have to make noise, people have to market themselves, whether they are good or bad, you will say you are the best. These comments are all about politics but what I will tell you is that PDP is a very strong party. It is because they are afraid of the PDP, that is why they are ganging up. It is not easy to dislodge PDP.

PDP is a very strong party that grows stronger and stronger on daily basis. All the experiences of these merger people will be behaving, PDP has had it and is overcoming all of them and is going to the next level. So we in the PDP are not pertubed and in Abia State, what can the APC or the opposition do? We have 24 house of assembly members and there is no other party that won any seat, so tell me are they going to do magic in 2015?
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