Nigeria’s former President, Olusegun Obasanjo has said that the 15 million out-of-school children are a threat to national security.
Obasanjo made the call at the 2022 Murtala Muhammed Foundation annual lecture in Abuja on Monday.
The United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF) had in a report last year put the number of out-of-school children in Nigeria at 15 million.
Obasanjo said, “It didn’t matter how the country dealt with Boko Haram, banditry and kidnapping – either by stick or by carrot approach – those 15 million children that should be in school, but are not in school are the potential Boko Haram of 10-15 years from now.
“I believe it is not late to start and say to ourselves ‘we do not want the Boko Haram of 2030 or 2035.
“But if we don’t do anything about those 15 million out-of-school children, we are already in more trouble with Boko Haram of the future.
“We, the society, must be willing to give them education and employment or they extract it from the society unwillingly.
“What I feared at that time seems to have been happening because in 2011, Boko Haram had not much of external connection.
“My fear was; could we be able to get them away from Al-Qaeda and other international terror organizations?
“We seem not to have been able to do that. Today, Boko Haram and those who have come to work with them are making the matter much worse than it was 11 years ago.
“Our economic situation today is lamentable. This, we also have to do something about. Education should be first priority, because if we are not able to take care of education, we cannot take care of other things.
“Unfortunately, we are not taking it seriously. Until we move Nigeria from being a country to being a nation, we are not going to go far.”
Obasanjo urged the federal government to address the malady in order to tackle the country’s security challenges.
