Date: 2019-03-30

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen.

I welcome you to this important gathering which focuses on what we can do to drive growth and development, using our youths as the launchpad.

Incidentally, Nigeria is a country blessed with huge population of youth. The United Nations estimated that Nigeria currently has a population of 199 million as at March 26, 2019. The country has one of the world's youngest population. The median age for Nigeria is put at 18.4years, according to the World Population Review estimate. Of the nearly 200 million Nigerians, says the estimates, over 111 million belong to the productive bracket, which persons between 18 and 65 dominate.

This is neither a good news nor a bad one. A country's youth population is often a double-edged sword. Higher youth population is an asset and a great element of power where the bulk of those young people are highly skilled, are engaged in very productive endeavors, and are duly mobilised for national development. But it could also be a burden -- or call it a timed bomb -- where the young population is not so skilled nor properly engaged in anything meaningful. The danger in the latter condition is that any country or society with predominantly ignorant or idle young population is a natural habitat for restiveness, drug abuse, and all sorts of crimes. The National Bureau of Statistics put youth unemployment in Nigeria at 36.50% as at the third quarters of 2018, down from 38% in the previous quarter of the same year. This figure doesn't cover the underemployment tally in the country.

As we assume office in the coming months, we have no doubt that one of the greatest challenges ahead of us in Kwara is how to address the youth question in order to engender growth and development as well as restore the dignity of not just the human person but the sanity of our communities.

Our administration, therefore, will pay premium attention to the wellbeing of the youths, among others, as a critical segment of our state, because we consider these as some of the top priorities of our incoming administration.

Building infrastructure across sectors will be key to attracting investments and employment generation. This explains our fixation on building infrastructure, given the huge deficit of same across the state - especially in parts of Kwara where investment in agro-processing factories would help jump start the local economy and create jobs.

Proper attention will especially be paid to critical infrastructure for primary and post-primary education, moral teachings and counselling as a way to (re)build a new generation of young people who can hold their own anywhere in the world.

We will run an administration with inclination towards moral rectitude and reorientation while also discouraging drug abuse, thuggery and a culture of unhealthy dependency which stifles socioeconomic growth.

On a final note, we will make sure that young people are at all time given ample opportunities to prove their mettle in a deliberate bid to make our youth agents of statecraft and catalysts for socioeconomic development in Kwara and Nigeria as a whole.

Thank you.

AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq Governor-Elect, Kwara State. March 30, 2019.