Presidency turns to skills training to tackle insecurity
—Tinubu’s aides seek to steer vulnerable youths away from crime through vocational education, entrepreneurship By Johnbosco Agbakwuru ABUJA — THE Presidency on Wednesday said it is seeking to tackle insecurity through…
Nigeria's security challenges, from banditry and kidnapping to communal violence and youth restiveness, have long been linked by officials and analysts to high unemployment and poverty, particularly among young people in a country where a large share of the population is under 30. Successive administrations have combined military and police operations ("kinetic" responses) with softer, non-military interventions aimed at addressing the root causes of crime, including poverty alleviation schemes, N-Power-style job programmes, and vocational training initiatives.
This latest move signals the Presidency framing skills acquisition and entrepreneurship training as part of a deliberate "non-kinetic" strategy to reduce the pool of vulnerable youths that armed groups and criminal networks often recruit from. Both Vanguard and Punch agree on the broad thrust of the initiative — vocational and entrepreneurship training for at-risk young Nigerians — though neither report, as summarised here, details the specific funding involved, implementation timeline, or which agencies will run the programmes, leaving questions about scale and accountability still to be addressed.