As 20,000 volunteers in the Osun Youth Empowerment Scheme (OYES) graduated, yesterday,  the state governor, Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola, has charged them to prove critics of the scheme wrong by exhibiting the virtues of the training they received by becoming better citizens in their respective local government areas.

Addressing the volunteers at the inauguration and passing out ceremonies held at the orientation camp of the National Youth Service Corps, Ede, Aregbesola also pleaded with members of his Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) and their relations who were not able to make the scheme to see it as a non-partisan exercise.

The governor  explained that while staunch members of his party were unable to secure places in the scheme, known members and relations of the opposition were successfully employed in OYES.

He recalled that when the scheme rolled out free application forms for volunteers to apply for places, over 200,000  people collected the forms which, he confessed, went beyond the expectation of his administration.

The selection, he added, was made without consideration for political, religious and ethnic identities of the applicants, stressing, “It is our belief (and the directive principle of governance we have adopted) that government is the collective property of the people and therefore nobody should be discriminated against in the sharing of its benefits”.

While advising the volunteers to disregard comments made by critics and detractors of the scheme, he told the crowd of people that it appeared like an impossible feat achieved by his administration.