ACCORD Party (AP) governorship candidate in Akwa Ibom State, Emem Coffie, has vowed to make youths gainfully employed.

Coffie, who spoke with The Guardian, stated that his vocational skill agenda would address unemployment, adding that it would turn youths from being liabilities to assets.

He said: “I have seen that graduates are struggling to survive, struggling to get into the public sector, struggling to get into civil service and they find it very difficult to even get into private businesses because they don’t have a godfather or a push.

“We have a population that is growing, but our youths are still without jobs, if you go to most of the universities outside the state, you will realise that graduates from here are doing very well but when they finish they don’t have work to do.

“What came to my mind is to establish many cottage industries, looking at the model of China and produce what everybody is using every day. We will look at industries that will take between four and five months to establish so that we can empower the people.”

He explained that the vocational system and the cottage industry would function together and the former would be feeding the latter with raw materials.