Lawmaker: protest should not lead to destruction

By Adeyinka Aderibigbe

 

The lawmaker representing Ajeromi Ifelodun Constituency, in the House of Representatives Kolawole Taiwo, has counseled youths to desist from willful destruction and seeing arson as the only way they could communicate their grievances to political leaders.

Noting that such acts would further slow down the pace of developments in the affected area, Taiwo said anyone who embraces violence or destruction of public properties and utilities is an enemy of the people whom those facilities destroyed are meant to serve.

Taiwo spoke during a meeting with his constituents at the maiden edition of his town hall meeting with stakeholders, which held at the L.A. Primary School, Ajegunle, in Ajeromi-Ifelodun Local Government. He flayed the burning of public utilities across the state and especially in the local government in the aftermath of the #EndSARS protest.

He described as condemnable the destruction and burning of the Ajeromi-Ifelodun council secretariat as well as other public and private properties torched by hoodlums during the three day crisis that enveloped the state. “This is outrightly condemnable and I urge you all to rise in unity and say never would such a thing ever happen in this local government again.”

He said: “To the youths never again should we burn down any of our heritage because of any complaint, we are AJITS,we are from Ajegunle.

“We are not like people from Victoria Island, for you to be recognised you must have done ten times what people from Victoria Island have done, therefore if you have anything here, you mustn’t destroy because of any complaint and we must be ready to express ourselves freely, talk to power freely, complain freely with no fear of harassment from anybody.”

The lawmaker who further affirmed his belief in human capacity development also unveiled plans to train 100 constituents in poultry and fishery, while officially empowering 16 youths who had earlier been trained on forex trading, with laptops to facilitate their daily transactions.

“Giving laptops is not the end of empowerment, that is why we sent them for special training on Forex, if you take forex trading very seriously you don’t need a job again, you need not be 419, you can make your cool money just by trading in currency every day.

“When you get hooked to it you make more money than those doing white or blue collar jobs. Therefore we have given you a tool that can create for you a job and that is where we are driving at, you can become a consultant, and start training people for a fee.

“In looking for jobs for our people, which is one of the reasons why we are holding political office, we must deliberately create entrepreneurs who would become risk takers who can create opportunities for others. That is what we are doing with this 16 youths, who are in the first batch. We want to assure you that this will go on regularly.  We aIso have a pick a trade form for other classes of our constituencies.

The pick a trade form is for the graduates that have been at home for some time because they are unemployable. Unemployment is not the problem but unemployability. Most of our people are unemployable that is why we introduced a trade initiative.

“If you are a graduate that has been at home for sometime and you think you need a refresher, discuss with the HKT foundation or go online and click on it, they will talk to you and you fill the form and we get you a job. We are going to prepare you for entrepreneurship and you will be an independent person.”