Ogun-Osun Dev Authority trains, empowers 62 youths on fish-smoking

No fewer than 62 youths in Ogun State have been trained and empowered with equipment on fish smoking, soap-making and confectioneries production by the Ogun-Oshun River Basin Development Authority.

The three-day Youth Training and Empowerment programme of the federal government trained the participants on processing, making, branding and marketing in soap, fish and confectioneries businesses.

At the closing ceremony, yesterday, of the programme organised for the youths in Ogun Central, Abeokuta, the Managing Director/ Chief Executive Officer of the Authority, Engineer Olufemi Odumosu, said the programme was geared towards making the participants self-reliant and economically empowered.

Odumosu said that apart from the training, the beneficiaries were handed empowerment materials and seed capital for take-off, thereby making them “employers of labour and consequently contributors to the overall socio-economic/ wealth creation potentials of the country.”

While imploring the beneficiaries to make good use of the “life-changing training programme,” Odumosu told them that the Authority would be embarking on occasional monitoring and evaluation visits to assess how the participants were faring after the programme.

He said, “The three-day programme, I believe, had impacted requisite skills, transferred knowledge and opened the participants’ eyes to the mechanics and dynamics of successful entrepreneurial potentials, its capacities, and the opportunities lying untapped in each of them.

“This programme rare opportunity to is a selfdiscovery, putting an end to job-search to settle down for real business, gold-mine businesses that can transform their fortunes and take them from where they are to where they want to be.”

One of the beneficiaries, Mrs Olamide Omotayo, thanked the Authority for the training and empowerment programme, and promised to make good use of the knowledge in order to become an employer of labour.