Ogun State Governor, Dapo Abiodun, has promised that his administration is ready to partner the National Youth Service Corps in mentoring the youth and inculcating in them the right moral values for the development of the country.
Governor Abiodun stated this when he received the new State Director of the NYSC, Mrs. Winifred Shopeka, accompanied by the out gone director, Mrs. Belinda Faniyi, at the Governor’s Office, Oke-Mosan, Abeokuta.
According to the governor, it had become imperative to teach the youth the right moral values to be able to navigate the 21st century taking into consideration the moral decadence that has become prevalent in the society nowadays.
“Consider us as partners in the process of mentoring our youth by teaching them to be morally right and to have the right skills to hold themselves in this competitive environment. We will also collaborate to teach them to interact with each other; to tear down the layers of divisive tendencies which have continued to characterised our political landscape.
“This is why the NYSC was put in place to assimilate children from the East to mingle with those from the North and the South so that all the walls of division can be pulled down”, he said.
He described the new Ogun State NYSC boss as a round peg in a round whole with experience on youth development, adding that her antecedents in her previous postings and her quest to re-orientate the youth on the right moral values was a welcome development.
He lauded the immediate past director as a hard-working, persistent, deliberate and a determined personality who had demonstrated leadership capacity, commitment and passion for the job assigned to her.
“I have no doubt that you were adequately prepared for the job having served in the state as a youth corps members. You have changed the face of NYSC in the state. I remember how much you asked me to intervene in the infrastructure deficit at the camp.
“I want to congratulate you on your 35 years of meritorious and unblemished service to your fatherland. I want to join your family in thanking God for you. You have not been consumed by the challenges of the offices and the different positions you have held in the past and you are going home retired but not tired”, the governor posited.
Abiodun assured that his administration would continue to collaborate and support the scheme in achieving its objectives of uniting the youth from different parts of the country, calling on the new director to see the state government as a partner in progress.
Speaking earlier, the out-gone director, Mrs. Faniyi, had intimated the governor that the scheme had established a farm for the cultivation of cassava and plantain, while a fish pond and a skill acquisition centre was also set up to train corps members to be self-reliant after their service year.
While thanking the governor for his support to the scheme in the last three years, Faniyi disclosed that a 100 bed hostel facility, with the help of the Akarigbo of Remo, Oba Babatunde Ajayi, has been completed and ready for commissioning, calling on the governor to extend the same hand of assistance given to her to her successor.
In her remarks, the new director, Mrs. Shopeka, hinted that her focus in the state would be on how to produce youth who would be agents of positive change and role models to the younger generation.
According to her, “during my time here, I will work towards producing youth who will be agents of positive change and role models to the ones coming behind. Character reformation is very important for a new Nigeria. We at the NYSC are focusing on skill acquisition to ensure that we prepare them for the future.”
