Pioneer Vice Chancellor of the National Open University, NOUN, and Secretary to the Kogi State Government, SSG, Professor Olugbemiro Jegede, has identified unemployment as one of the major problems confronting the people of Kogi Central Senatorial District in Kogi State.
Jegede, an indigene of Ogori/Magongo, one of the five local government councils in the senatorial district, made the observation at the second year constituency briefing of Nurudeen Abatemi-Usman, the senator representing the district in the Red Chamber of the National Assembly.
Commending the senator’s quality representation of his people in the Senate, the SSG noted that a lot still need to be done to bring about total transformation in the senatorial district and Kogi State in general. He said: “I must say that personally I know many other things the senator has done that are not here (scorecard publication). And that is to tell you that he has taken not only giant but bold strides that are significant for us in our Central senatorial district.
But there are issues and the issues border more on encouraging him to do more. I wouldn’t want go over all the issues but for me the most important is to make sure that employment of all our youths, our able-bodied people return to our senatorial district. We are still grappling with the issue of the steel industry. We are still grappling with the issue of the iron ore industry.“ The former Vice Chancellor of NOUN added: “In this country it has been identified that there are 29 important mineral resources in Nigeria. Kogi state has got 23.
In fact, I have just been told that we have 24 out of 29. Kogi State has the largest deposit of Iron Ore. We have the largest deposit of limestone. And apart from that Kogi State produces 60 per of the cashew that are exported from the country. So, really we shouldn’t be talking about unemployment at all.”
