Walk through Ijebu-Ode on a weekday morning and ask the traders where their children are. Lagos, they will tell you. Abuja. Canada, if the family could raise the money. Ogun East has never been short of talent. What it is short of is reasons for that talent to stay.
This is the complaint Omo Owo hears more than any other. It is not really a complaint about young people. It is a complaint about representation. A district that sends its brightest away every year is a district whose federal presence has not worked for it.
What the federal government actually controls
A senator does not create jobs directly. What a senator controls is legislation, appropriation, and oversight, and all three reach youth employment. Federal skills funding is appropriated every year. Federal agencies run enterprise programmes that rarely reach Ogun East. Federal projects are awarded, abandoned, and never audited. Each of those is something a serious senator can move.
Three things, specifically
First, dedicated federal skills and enterprise funding for young people across Ogun East, with a focus on technical and digital skills. Not a promise of jobs. A line of funding that can be traced, argued for in every appropriations cycle, and reported on in public.
Second, entrepreneurship grants and cooperative loans across all nine LGAs. Many young people here are already working. They run phone repair shops, tailoring businesses, small farms, and delivery services. What they lack is capital at a rate that does not eat them alive.
Third, a youth employment bureau in Ijebu-Ode, built with the federal agencies that already hold the mandate. One place a young person can walk into, find out what training and funding exist, and be helped to apply for them.
How you will know if it is working
Every quarter, the campaign has committed to a public report on every bill sponsored, every vote cast, and every project tracked. Youth funding will be in it. If the money does not arrive, you will see that too.