Fayemi scores self high as World Bank inaugurates youth employment scheme

Ado-Ekiti –  Gov. Kayode Fayemi of Ekiti on Friday said his administration had repositioned the state and put it in the limelight in the last four years.

Fayemi stated this at the inauguration of the Youth Employment and Social Support Operation (YESSO) in Ado- Ekiti.

He said the efforts of his administration in transforming the state had paid off with the state taking the lead virtually in all indices of human development.

According to the governor, this is attested to by local and international bodies as there have been tangible changes in the lives of the citizens.

The governor said that Ekiti had been rated highly in terms of efficiency, transparency and competitiveness among the states in Nigeria.

According to him, the “World Bank Ease of Doing Business Report’’ now puts Ekiti among the five leading states that have made remarkable progress in all indices of doing business with ease.

Fayemi said that Ekiti was ranked 34th position out of the 36 states before the advent of his administration; it was heart- warming that the state had progressed to the first five.

The governor explained that Ekiti had benefitted from at least six World Bank projects to the tune of 150 million dollars in agriculture, health, education, governance and infrastructure.

He said that the Social Security Scheme and the Youth Volunteer Programmes introduced by his administration attracted World Bank to Ekiti as pilot state for its Youth Employment and Social Support Operation (YESSO).

The development had put the state in a better position against rumour in some quarters that the government had only paid attention to infrastructural development at the expense of human development.

Fayemi added that the focus of his government on infrastructural development was not unconnected to the fact that good infrastructure was a catalyst for sustainable human development.

The governor, who donated four vehicles to the YESSO programme in the state, urged the World Bank to continue its partnership with Ekiti Government regardless of which political party was in government.

In a remark, the World Bank Representative, Prof. Foluso Okunmadewa, commended the Fayemi-led administration for pursuing programmes that were aimed at transforming the lives of the people.

Okunmadewa explained that YESSO programme was a welfare intervention programme of the World Bank aimed at reducing poverty among the people and increased access to opportunities for youth employment and social service delivery.

The World Bank’s representative said that Nigerian youths were the key to actualising the Vision 2020, but regretted that youth unemployment was a major challenge to actualising it.

He disclosed that 50 million dollars had been approved for Ekiti to undertake a water project, adding that the state represented the bank’s model of development partnership.