POOR EDUCATION RESPONSIBLE FOR VICES, UNEMPLOYMENT – DAFINONE

Delta Central senatorial aspirant, Mr Ede Dafinone, has said the high rate of social vices in the country and high level of youth unemployment should be blamed on the poor educational system.

Dafinone, who stated this in Abuja while declaring his intention to contest for senatorial seat, said: 'The problem of poor level of education has given rise to a higher level of crime around the country, not just in Delta Central.' He added that there is the need to inject greater funding into education to ensure the youths were properly educated from the critical first stages.

The younger Dafinone is vying for the seat currently occupied by Professor Erhiawarie Eferakeya and once held by his father, Senator David Dafinone. He warned that it was dangerous that some Nigerians born two generations ago were not educated to the level where they can get job, saying, 'those generations constitute a serious burden to the nation.' According to him, this category of people would grow up to be 50, 60 years of age and not able to apply for any job nor be able to feed their families.

'When you get a large group of people in that classification, they are tied to poverty for the rest of their life. In order to get out of this predicament before they attain old age, such people easily fall into the temptation of taking to criminal activities to survive,' Dafinone said. The senatorial aspirant pointed out that the issues of banditry, hostage taking, kidnapping were major problems that needed to be addressed urgently.

Dafinone also identified the problems of poor healthcare delivery and poor infrastructure.

'The quality of healthcare is so poor. Nigeria is still very high on the infant mortality list. The clinics have not been staffed to a level where we can be assured of proper healthcare delivery. We are still at the level where polio is still an issue within Nigeria, within Delta Central.

'We have a large number of roads between local governments, inter-state roads that are either uncompleted or in a bad state of disrepair. If the roads and transportation systems are improved, the movement of goods and farm produce would increase the whole market size available to farmers, traders,' he said.