Jonathan, Dangote Seek Jobs, Almajiri Schools To Tackle Insecurity At MD Abubakar’s Book Launch
Former President Goodluck Jonathan and industrialist Aliko Dangote have called on the federal government to prioritise job creation and revive abandoned social intervention programmes to tackle terrorism, banditry, and…
Nigeria's security crisis — spanning Boko Haram and ISWAP insurgency in the North-East, banditry and mass kidnappings in the North-West, and farmer-herder clashes across the Middle Belt — has long been linked by analysts to poverty, unemployment and the large population of out-of-school children, particularly the Almajiri system in which young boys are sent away for Islamic education but often end up begging on the streets without formal schooling or vocational skills. Successive governments have proposed reforms to the Almajiri system and launched programmes such as the Great Green Wall initiative, aimed at combating desertification and economic decline in the North, but implementation has historically been patchy and many such interventions have stalled or been abandoned.
The remarks from Goodluck Jonathan and Aliko Dangote came at the public presentation of a book by former Inspector-General of Police M.D. Abubakar, placing two prominent voices — a past head of state and Nigeria's most prominent industrialist — behind renewed calls to address the structural roots of insecurity rather than relying solely on military responses. Leadership's report frames the appeal broadly around job creation and reviving abandoned social intervention schemes, while Punch's headline narrows in specifically on Jonathan's call to revive Almajiri education and the Great Green Wall project, leaving details such as funding commitments or a concrete implementation timeline unaddressed in the coverage so far.