Adams Oshiomhole, a former governor of Edo State, has talked about Bola Tinubu’s plans if he is elected president of Nigeria in 2023. Tinubu is the presidential candidate for the APC.
This was said by Oshiomhole, the Deputy Director General of the APC Presidential Campaign Council, in an interview on Roadmap 2023, a pre-recorded Channels Television programme that covers the preparations for the general elections in Nigeria that will take place in 2019.
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In the interview, the former APC National Chairman made the case that Nigeria’s current “bandits” were actually people whose welfare had been disregarded by previous administrations.
Oshiomhole says that if the APC nominee is chosen to replace President Muhammadu Buhari on February 25, he or she will force this group of people to get an education and learn new skills.
“Those people we refer to as bandits are people, in my opinion, whom the country has dehumanised as young children, denied them access to education, and who spend their entire lives begging, living from hand to mouth, beneath the weather (and) nobody cares,” he said.
“They are in their late 20s, uneducated, and on their own because the public cannot find their parents.” Even if they must rely on begging, the number of people who can provide alms is decreasing, so they now choose to turn to what we now refer to as “banditry.”
“Asiwaju addressed the long-term solution. We must acknowledge that having amajiri as a given in the twenty-first century is not ideal. Beyond formal legality, every Nigerian must be entitled to free, universal, and required education.
The reasoning for that is that if you must have a child, you have a legal obligation to make sure they attend school, at the very least through primary school.
“The Almajiri system of growth and development cannot continue,” the former governor of Edo added.
For the full interview, do watch Channels Television’s Roadmap 2023 on Monday.
