The Accord Party (AP) gubernatorial candidate in Akwa Ibom, Mr. Emem Coffie, has vowed to make youth gainfully employed instead of surviving through blackmail.
Coffie stated this while interacting with newsmen Monday in Uyo and decried that youth were being used by some politicians to run down another person before giving them favour.
He stated that his vocational skill agenda would address the sad situation, adding that it will turn both the present and upcoming youth from liability to an asset.
“I have seen that graduates are struggling to survive, struggling to get into the public sector, struggling to get into civil service and they find it very difficult to even get into private businesses because they don’t have a godfather or a push.
“We have a population that is growing, but our youth are still without jobs, if you go to most of the universities outside the state, you will realise that graduates from here are doing very well, but when they finish they don’t have work to do.
“Youths get very busy forming and joining political groups and after elections, they are forgotten and for you to get favour after then you need to go and run down some other persons. We are going to stop all that.
“What came to my mind is to establish many cottage industries, looking at the model of China and produce what everybody is using every day. We will look at industries that will take between 4 and 5 months to establish so that we can empower the people,” he said.