By Ozioruva Aliu

BENIN CITY – THE governor of Edo State, Sen. Monday Okpebholo has called on youths in the state to use available tools to the and their skills to proger solutions to the problems in their environment rather than lament about the situation of the country.

The governor said they should display their talents in their areas of specialisation whether in the digital space, the music industry, the fashion industry, agricultural industry, branding, among others.

Okpebholo spoke in Benin City yesterday at the day 2 of Edo Youth Impact Forum (EYIF) 2.0 with the theme: Ideas, Capital & Impact.

Represented by the Secretary to the State Government (SSG), Umar Musa Ikhilor, Okpebholo expressed his administration’s commitment on the “welfare and development of our youth and harnessing the immense potentials and talents and creativity of the Edo youths.”

He added “Ask yourself, what you can do to fix a problem in your community, within your environment, instead of just sitting down to complain and grumbling, raining abuses, you can choose to do something.
Take action. Part of taking action might just be participating, participate, be involved. Let us not just be on social media abusing, complaining.

“Whether in the digital space, the music industry, the fashion industry, even the agricultural industry and all that, continue to do what you are doing and do it well, someday the opportunities will come and it will meet your preparation.”

Earlier, the Team Lead and Special Adviser on Finance, Investments and Revenue Generation, Kizito Okpebholo, stated that the programme was the idea of the governor to do something for Edo youths.

He added: “Last year, he tasked me to do something for our youth. He said, go and do something for our youth. Go and plan a program for our youth. Something that is different from every other kind of youth empowerment program. I was able to build a team around me and we delivered the first edition where we gave out N10,000,000 to 5 startup ideas of N2,000,000 each. We gave N10,000,000 to 5 business ideas.

“This year, we are taking it a step further. We are giving out N40,000,000 in grants to 11 business groups. We have them in different categories.”