The Delta State Governor, Ifeanyi Okowa, has scored his administration high, in its empowerment programme.
Okowa, in his inaugural speech on May 29, 2015 had said, the performance of his administration would be predicated on a SMART agenda, which is an acronym for Strategic wealth creation projects and provision of jobs for all residents of the state.
The governor said, “I came in with the SMART Agenda and I have continued to stay on course despite the economic recession; yes I agree that we are supposed to move much faster than we are doing today, but, the fact remains that though the economy is bad we have continued to keep hope alive and we will continue to stay focused on our programs.”
“In the year 2015, we had two main programs for the youths; the Youth Agriculture and Entrepreneurship Program(YAGEP) and in that year, we had 256 youths that were trained in agricultural production, we are happy to announce that they have all been established; we have visited some of them and they are doing very well, and we are glad to announce the success of the program,” He said.
“In the Skills Training and Entrepreneurship Program (STEP) we engaged 1044 youths, we have had a continued monitoring and mentoring program; and the reports we have received have been very positive.”
The governor also disclosed that, “In 2016, the YAGEP program, we trained 342 persons while in the STEP program, we trained 557 persons; the programs had their starter packs put in place and we had a micro-credit adjustment.
“We believe that if we continue to meet the people’s need, things will be better for them, so, while we are providing them with starter packs, we are also introducing them to work with the micro-credit scheme”
“We have also started a program for people with disabilities, they have been engaged in the programs and they are currently doing very well.
“We had the graduate employment enhancement scheme; most of the youths in the agricultural scheme are in clusters because we realized that it was the best way and we have been doing very well with the cluster system,” He said.