Gombe State Governor, Muhammadu Yahaya, on Tuesday decried how lack of access to education, has compounded myriads of issues faced in the North.
Yahaya who doubles as Chairman of Northern States Governors’ Forum made this disclosure when he received Northern States Governors’ Wives Forum at the Executive Council Chamber, Government House.
PERISCOPE NIGERIA reports that wives of governors from Katsina, Niger, Taraba, Zamfara, Bauchi, Kaduna, Sokoto, Plateau, Borno, Jigawa, Kogi, Nasarawa, Adamawa, were present.
According to Yahaya, the world is going through so much challenges and Nigeria is no exemption saying “that of the North is the worst as at today and as such we need to come together to join hands and see that we overcome this challenges.”
The NSGF chairman added, “The Almajiri syndrome; out-of-school children, Nigeria is now having the highest number in the world it’s very unfortunate that almost a quarter of the 21st century gone and we are yet to key into the development agenda of the world, nothing ever happens without education. It’s education that brings development, changes the ties and brings good life to the people. We need to modernise, but will modernise only when we are educated.”
While urging for concerted effort towards tackling the challenges Yahaya harped the need for prioritising of education, healthcare and skills.
“Education helps us know the dictates of Allah Subhanahu Wa ta’ala, because if you are not educated you may not worship God well. We have huge task ahead the insurgency other issues associated with it either displacement in the North-East, which extended to North-West with an addition of banditry kidnap for ransom other killing activities and the North-Central. If the North is not in peace it means the country is not in peace and the sub-saharan Africa. We need to redouble our efforts in order to overcome the challenges through education, healthcare, social economic development in terms of entrepreneurship,” he added.
He blamed drugs and narcotics as been cause for the reason crime and criminalities are in the increase, “especially in the North basically our people are farmers 75 to 80 per cent of them and ironically, even to go to farm they go under the influence of drugs so that that they can have extra manpower that is the situation. Coupled with the flow of arm and ammunition in the society if we don’t take care of measure up in order to curtail these tomorrow there may be no Northern Nigeria social fabric will be eroded, social life will be destroyed and anarchy will set in because of jungle justice.”
Speaking earlier, Asma’u Yahaya, told her husband and Chairman of NSGF that their mission was to hold their quarterly meeting spiced with empowerment and seminar on drug abuse.
He added, “Which is one of the project we carry out in this Forum to assist our people as mothers. We have a project on Almajiri which is a menace in the North, we will concentrate more on the menaces in our society to see how we can help in our very little ways as you know we are supporting our husbands. We can’t do without saying very big thank you to our husbands.”
