Obiano Combats Crime with Job Creation, Compiles Data of Unemployed Youths
In fulfilment of his promise to fight crime and criminality in Anambra State through a massive job creation scheme, the Executive Governor, Chief Willie Obiano has ordered the commencement of an exercise aimed at creating a comprehensive data bank on all unemployed youths in the state with a view to offering them employment.
Announcing this Tuesday at the flag off of a road project in Achina in Aguata Local Government Area of the state, the governor advised unemployed Anambra youths who want to make something meaningful of their lives to seize the moment and go to the state Ministry of Youth and Sports as well as the local government council offices for registration.
Obiano's new administrative drive took its propelling force from his promise in his first Broadcast to Ndi Anambra in April this year when he had declared the determination of his administration to push for a more crime-free society by creating jobs for the state's teeming population of youths.
'Ndi Anambra, my administration shall be sensitive and responsive to your needs. To this end, we have realized that our crackdown on criminals must go hand in hand with a robust plan for youth employment. We are well aware that if we replace the guns in the hands of our youths with employment letters and seed monies for small-scale businesses, Anambra would be freer from criminals and social miscreants that have denied us a peace of mind,' he had declared in the Special Broadcast timed to mark his one month in office.
Largely hailed as a bold attempt to put a human face to the on-going crackdown on criminals in the state, Obiano's announcement contains a comprehensive plan to train the youths in various agricultural and farming methods, including poultry, fish-farming, animal husbandry and other life-sustaining skills that will keep the youths off the streets.
According to him, the data capturing exercise will also provide his administration a rich reservoir of statistics that would not only help facilitate planning and budgeting but also help the realization of other initiatives as contained in his administration's 4-Pillars of Development.
Since he assumed power as the governor of Anambra State in March this year, Chief Obiano has taken some bold steps to bring a positive change in the state, confronting the intimidating challenge of insecurity in the state with an iron will and enormous resources on one hand and seeking creative ways of taking the youths away from the streets through a planned massive creation of jobs.
The governor has also responded to the clamour for a befitting state capital by inaugurating a Special Committee on the Awka Capital Territory which he charged with the mandate of chiselling out a new capital city that would best approximate the true essence of the people of the state, reflecting their well-known entrepreneurial spirit and sense of aesthetics.
The 9-man Awka Capital Territory Development Board is led by an indigene of the capital city, Chike Egwuatu
Inaugurating the Awka Capital Development Board, governor Obiano urged the team to look beyond Anambra's financial limitations and let their imagination soar in order to create a structural design that would give the city a befitting status.
Showing them a photograph of the famed city of Dubai as it was in 1990 and what it became in 2010, the governor charged the team to transform Awka from its current status of a city trying to shrug off its rustic edges into a modern capital city.
The governor outlined the committee's terms of reference include to accelerate infrastructural development of the Awka Capital Territory, prepare a master plan for the capital territory and for the land use in respect of the town planning within the capital territory, implement the Awka capital territory master plan and provide infrastructural service in accordance with the master plan.