Imo Youth Ministry Has Created Synergy Between Govt And Youths, Says Commissioner, Ukaegbu "Mandela"

By Ahize Anthony

The Imo state commissioner for Youth development and Talent hunt, Honourable Mandela Ukaegbu has stated that the ministry is on a mission to create a lasting synergy between Youths and Imo state government through the discovery and promotion of young talents, the statesman newspaper can exclusively report. 

Ukaegbu revealed this to Members of the sports writers association of Nigeria during a courtesy visit to his office at the ministry of Youths Development and talent hunt Annex, old assembly office new owerri. 

Ukaegbu also laid emphasis on efforts made by the ministry to promote young talents and then further project them to the world and in achieving this, a partnership with SWAN is in order. 

In his words, Ukaegbu told the Statesman newspaper; 

“The Ministry will be coming up with a lot of activities for our younger generations that are not only football alone, we would also include other sporting activities, we would look at sporting activities like Chess, Javelin, marathon and others. 

We want to see how we can promote our younger people by discovering this young talents and then projecting them to the world.

This is why we will need SWAN to help in this project. 

We are not restricting it to sports alone, We will also look into talents in areas ICT, Agriculture, business and other means. When We discover them, we will now hand them over to the ministry in charge for further development which is why we have partnership with Heartland , ministry of sports, ministry of Agriculture and so many other ministries that will be in charge. 

By doing all this, we are trying to create a lasting synergy between the Imo state government and Imo youths.” Ukaegbu said. 

Members of SWAN further reassured the commissioner of their willingness to partner with the ministry and help in anyway necessary for proper projection of the younger generation. 

On the minor misunderstanding with Imo FA and the Governors cup organizing committee, Ukaegbu cleared the air;

“FUTO couldn’t honour their match early enough because of some technical issues and to that effect the referee walked them over and the decision was upheld by the committee. 

FUTO then wrote an appeal letter stating their issues and pleading for a reconsideration. And bearing in mind that we had to be careful in handling the situation that concerns the student community because they are volatile, full of energy with a lot of understanding and misunderstanding, so it is a very delicate situation that we need to handle with concern. 

An opportunity came to give them a second chance, which is the 8th team that would complete the knockout stage team for the quarter finals. 

That last slot was giving to the best losers who lost out from the initial stage. So we considered that since FUTO was among the losers, and not disqualified, we decided to give them the opportunity to compete among the losers for the last slot remaining to complete the quarter finalist.” Ukaegbu concluded.