Friends of Osun Governor Woo OYES Ex-Cadets to Support Oyetola’s Re-election.
A group of friends of the Governor of Osun, Alhaji Gboyega Oyetola, have approached former beneficiaries of the Osun Youths Empowerment Scheme (OYES), to support the re-election of their friend.
OYES was one of the strategies by the former Governor Rauf Aregbesola to tackle mass youths unemployment when he came into office.
Each year, his administration recruited 20,000 unemployed youths who were thereafter given trainings and assigned specific community duties and paid N10,000 monthly.
The scheme also trained the beneficiaries in different trades such a fashion, modern farming, daily needs productions and others.
Each stream of 20,000 spent two years before the recruitment of another batch.
Before the exit of Aregbesola in 2018, his administration had engaged about 60,000 of the OYES Cadets.
However, beneficiaries have complained that the scheme had lost steam and focus since the exit of Aregbesola.
On Saturday, hundreds of the former cadets were invited to a hall in Osogbo, the state capital where friends of the governor, in company with the Commandante of the scheme, Col. Enibukun, allegedly appealed to the former cadets to support the re-election of Oyetola.
Cadets who attended the meeting in Osogbo, which, according to them, is one of the zones where the friends of the governor are meeting them, said there were complaints by the cadets to the friends of the governor why is it that they are inviting them for a meeting when the election is less than seven months.
The friends of the governor had come under the Gboyega Oyetola Foundation umbrella.
Col Enibukun, according to one of the cadets who attended the meeting but pleaded anonymity, begged for support saying that should Oyetola lose the election, that would be the end of the scheme in Osun.
Specifically, the Commandante was quoted as saying that over 65,000 members of the former cadets is not a joke in electoral values.
“I think they have seen that OYES cadets are not happy at all with the way we have been treated since Aregbesola left. They are looking for a way to woo us to support the governor. Well, that is left to individuals to decide,” the cadet said.
The cadet said another meeting has been slated to hold in Osogbo on Tuesday to continue with the appeal.
“That will continue in other zones of the East Senatorial District and Osun West senatorial district. But I think it would have been good for them to have continued the programme the way Aregbesola started it,” the cadet added.
OYES, which was a flagship programme of the Aregbesola administration was adopted by the World Bank as a model for other states of Nigeria as part of an ingenious methods to solve youths unemployment.
The scheme in Osun had inspired the World Bank to grant the Nigerian government about $300m to commence the Federal Government’s Youtht Employment and Social Support Operations.
OYES cadets were found in every corners of Osun.
