Tinubu asks FG to employ 50 million youths into the Nigerian army, police
National leader of the All Progressives Congress (APC) and former Lagos State governor, Bola Ahmed Tinubu has called on the federal government to urgently recruit 50 million Nigerian youths into the Nigerian Army and the police to tackle insecurity and unemployment in the country.
The former governor while speaking at the 12th Asiwaju Bola Tinubu Colloquium held in Kano stated that bandits are taking advantage of the unemployment rate in the country to recruit youths into criminal activities.
He noted that failure to address unemployment will continue to allow bandits to take advantage and recruit young Nigerians for peanuts he, therefore, called on political leaders to create jobs for the youths.
“We are under policed and we are competing with armed robbers and bandits. We are to recruit a group of youths who are unemployed. Thirty-three percent are unemployed.
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“Recruit 50 million youths into the army and take them away from their (bandits) recruitment source. What will they eat? Let them eat cassava or agbado or corn in the morning and yam in the afternoon. These are grown here. You create demand and consumption for over five million armies of boot camps. We grow food. That is money for the farmers; that is the consumption for the soldiers and skill development.
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“Don’t call them illiterates, don’t talk about illiteracy. Anybody who can own a gun, who can handle a gun, who can cock a gun and clean the chamber and cock and shut is technically competent to repair a tractor on the farm.
“Not when you can create or log into a computer that you are technically competent. Those who are working on sugarcane farms can do so and many other things and transfer key labour. Those who can do our cotton and not when you bring fabrics from China that you become a nationalist.
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“I have never known what they called Cornflakes until I got to America and it is from our corn. This alcohol that we are using for Coronavirus, I never knew it is from Gum you grow here. How many of it can we produce? We can cover the entire West African sub-region. Let us do it at home. We can create jobs. The jobs are here and, surprisingly, when you see social media, these days, you find very creative minds of Nigerians. I salute our youths. They are angry now and they are showing their anger, but we will appeal to them.
“We have listened to our sisters and brothers here teaching us how to get them engaged. Maybe some of us are old-fashioned, but we must mix it too. The agitation can be dangerous. We have to mix it so that Nigeria is handled carefully.” Tinubu said.