THE Osun state government on Monday announced a short postponement of the highly anticipated first edition of its Regional Youth Summit dubbed ‘Western Nigeria Regional Youth Summit’ billed for Osogbo, the state capital this week due to demands of Yorubas in diaspora for effective participation.
Announcing the postponement at a press conference in Osogbo, the state commissioner for Regional Integration, Mr. Bola Ilori expressed joy at the huge acceptance received by the idea of the summit.
Ilori said, “We must say we are pleasantly surprised at the huge interest the idea of the summit has generated across the country. We never estimated that it will receive this volume of enthusiasm. It’s more surprising that we openly announced that we were not going to provide transport nor pay for accommodation yet 2097 conscious youths of western Nigeria have registered online on our portal before we closed it. This reality is quite different from the image people erroneously attached to our youths.”
“We considered it a matter of pride and privilege to receive ‘appeal of interest’ to participate from youths in diaspora most especially those that live and work in North and South America, Europe, Asia, and Middle East. Also, a number of our youths currently resides in Northern and other Southern parts of the country. The appeal from these segments of our population have been so overwhelming. Most of them have planned to return home for the New year break.”
The commissioner added that the elders and critical stakeholders are virtually unanimous that it will be a major historical error to shut this critical segment of our population out of this epoch making event which is the first of its kind in the history of Nigeria.
“We have reached out to the office of the Vice President who is scheduled to declare the gathering open and some of the other dignitaries on this latest development and have expressed readiness to bend over backwards to accommodate the request for a short shift in the date”.
He further expressed the state’s delight in observing that majority of the sons and daughters of Western region holds the development of the region as of highest priority.
Ilori, however assured that the event will hold within the next two weeks “we hereby announce a short postponement of the Regional Youth Summit 2017, initially fixed for 12th &13th of December, 2017”.
“In view of this consideration, we deeply regret all inconveniences the postponement might have caused.
Please, be rest assured that a new date, within this festive season, will be communicated shortly.”
The Commissioner also used the medium to express the government appreciation to the media and committee members . “We want to thank you gentlemen of the press for your support since the first day we rolled out our plan to organize the first ever Non Partisan Regional Youth Summit.
“We appreciate the effort of our independent social media team for a job well done. We give kudos to all committees at various levels that had given so much time, energy and commitment to drive this initiative far within a very short period of time”.
