Former lawmaker Senator Shehu Sani stated that the escalating banditry in the Northern region of Nigeria has resulted in the closure of more than ten thousand schools.
Speaking at the 15th Ralph Opara Memorial Lecture on Girl Child Education, organised by the National Association of Seadogs, Sani emphasised the urgent need for education to address insecurity.
He attributed the rise in violence to the failure to adequately educate nomads, highlighting the impact on young people in their 20s and 30s involved in criminal activities.
Sani urged the government to prioritise education, security, and agricultural investment to address the isissue’soot causes.
His words: “If Northern Nigeria wants to get it right, it must invest in education. The schools that produced the best brains in Nigeria are uninhabitable today. They are no longer conducive to learning. We have seen how kidnapping and terrorism destroyed public education in Nigeria.
“Look at what happened to girls at Federal Government College Yauri. Look at what happened to young girls at a college in Zamfara State. Look at what happened even in Kaduna State today. Terrorism has become a serious problem as far as education in Nigeria is concerned. We need to get things right, and we have to do it now.
“The government of President Tinubu, as far as I am concerned, what we need now is education, security and investment in agriculture. These are the basic things. I want to make this categorically clear, it is the right of people to criticise the government andand express their opinions.
“But the North must not use sectionalism and sentiment. We’ve seen how eight years of Buhari were wasted. Almost all the security apparatus of this country were headed by Northerners. Trillions of Naira were pumped into defence and security, which never led to security in this part of the country.”
“People now pay taxes and levies to terrorists before they could be allowed to go to their farms. There are parts of the state today where rural dwellers call on other terror groups to protect them from other terrorists. So you can see how this country is gradually collapsing. What is right should be done.
“We should support the Service Chiefs. We should support the National Security Advisor; they should do whatever they can to secure this country. The use of Northern sentiment or regional sentiment would not help because we had the opportunity to get it right, and we failed to do it.”
