Oba Abdulrasheed Akanbi, the Oluwo of Iwo has promised to sensitise, rehabilitate, and turn the lives of youths particularly those that are socially tagged as thugs in Iwoland.
He vowed to transform them to positive agents of the society.
Speaking to them, the popular monarch charged the repentant thugs to channel their strength and wisdom to sustain peace in the community and Nigeria at large.
According to Oluwo, efforts are in top gear to commit a special fund for proper rehabilitation and reintegration of the youths in the community.
He noted that most of them involve in criminality because they either feel not being catered for or being used and abandoned by politicians.
The monarch, while addressing the repentant thugs and their leaders who are from the Iwo community and its environs in his palace, advocated for peace, saying: “The society that bred miscreants over the years has the responsibility to refine them and make them useful for themselves.
“I consider youth engagement as part of my social contribution to ensure that youths, particularly those that are socially tagged as thugs, are sensitised, rehabilitated, and turned to positive agents of the society.
“We are going to give them scholarships. If they want to learn trades, we will empower them. The era of raising thugs for destructive purposes is gone. The era is dead. I want to give promoters of thuggery in Iwoland a red card.
“Most of them thrive in criminality because they either feel not being catered for, some leaders in the past disappointed them. I believe they can still be useful, especially for the security of this country. We have to change and rehabilitate the people we tag as thugs.
“It is the society that bred them. The problem did not just start now. So we have to dialogue with them, and we have made up our mind to invest in them. We want to change those bad eggs to become good eggs.
“We have to avert what happened during the #EndSARS protests when property belonging to people was destroyed. You can imagine, one of the illustrious sons of this town, his property that was built over the years, even before he ventured into politics was destroyed. We don’t want that to happen again,” Oluwo said.
