The Katsina state governor, Aminu Masari, raised the dangers abandoned and uneducated children pose to the society.
He said these children are fodder for and are part of the bandits that now wreak havoc on the state and its neighbours.
Masari made this known while discussing his administration’s efforts in curbing the activities of bandits. He said if the trend is not addressed, and children educated, things will only get worse.
“We have problems now with the forest people because they have no education of any kind. They do not have Islamic education and they do not have Western education because they have been abandoned in the forest and forgotten. So these are the kind of children who have come up today fighting society.
“If we don’t do more to address it, what will come out of the forest in the next 20 years compared with what we have today, will turn out to be like a child’s play,” Masari said.
According to him, the absence of education and family planning virtues are why the residents of the area give birth to children they cannot cater for.
“I was told this evening that somebody can mobilise over 350 armed men from the forest and we are talking about 350 men without formal schooling, neither Islamic nor Western, and they are all married and have children.”
