The Ondo State Oil Producing Areas Development Commission (OSOPADEC) has reiterated its commitment to empowering the youths in the mandate area to address youth unemployment and promote economic growth.
The Secretary of the Commission, Princess Abike Bayo-Ilawole who disclosed this during the first financial stewardship and budget performance for OSOPADEC management staff, said the commission is set to embark on training youths on fish farming and various aquaculture value chains.
Bayo-Ilawole said the youths would be trained on best practices in fishery towards maximum profit and food sufficiency in the state.
She said “We are looking at the agricultural area to take some of our youths off the streets. We want to keep them busy and if the plan works out the way we want, some of them, will become employers of labour.
“We are bringing them to their familiar fields. We are not taking them far away from what they are used to, what they are being born with, and this is fish food.
“We might not be able to throw fish to the ocean, but we are developing this cage fishing farming, and we have started this about two or three months and we are through with preparation.
“We have gotten some of these ponds stocked with fingerlings, and we started feeding them in their different stages. So we are pulling our youth together, training them will not be difficult, because they are familiar with fishing.
“We just want to give them some little technicalities, for them to get along with the modern trend of training fish and this is not the usual open field fishery, we are looking at floating fish caging in the ocean and this we have it in Ilaje and Ese Odo.
“So we’re having it on a large scale and we’re starting with catfish now, we want to get to the level that Ilaje and Ese-Odo will supply every fish needed in Ondo.
“We want to take it beyond, we want to take it to other states, in Nigeria, and we are looking at the possibility of going to train them in floating cages too, in the seaside, those fish that can grow in the sea, because we have an expanse sea ocean that is wide enough for us.
“So we are thinking of putting the youth together. We have secured the security aspect of the area. We want to see how possible for us to develop some youth even outside the country.”
While speaking on the import of the workshop, Bayo Ilawole said the management team came together in order to review the activities of the commission and to identify its strengths and weaknesses.
She assured that all ongoing projects to make lives comfortable for the people of the mandate area would be completed, saying “we want projects that can add value to the lives of our people”
The lead consultant of the organisation, Prof. Tomola Obamuyi, said the workshop is to equip the staff with the art of preparing a budget, planning, executing and monitoring the budget.
“I’m talking about evaluation to be sure that at any point in time, there will not be much deviation between the expected and the actual. In other words, we have a very high level of performance. When evaluation is done.” he said
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