… Want government to rehabilitate, integrate
Following the trending report of how malnourished and sick the arrested #EndBadGovernance protesters look, a Coalition of Northern Youths Groups has called on President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to wade into the ongoing arraignment, detention and prosecution of the under aged Protesters across the country describing it as inhumane and condescending.
While making the appeal in a press release made available to newsmen on Friday in Minna, the Founder of Yan-Almajiri Endowment Initiative and BoT Chairman, Coalition of Northern Youths Group, Yahaya Mohammed Usman (Sai Baba) decried the ill-treatment and traumatic state the minors were when arraigned in court on Friday, adding that “they look very sick and are wriggling in pain on the floor of the court.”
It should be noted that, the federal government on Friday arraigned 76 of the minors who looked malnourished, and four of them were hurriedly rushed out of the courtroom as they could not stand on their feet.
They were arrested and detained during the August 1 to 10, 2024, nationwide protest in the country which was sparked by widespread economic hardship that led many Nigerians to take to the streets to express their grievances.
In August this year, the Coalition of Northern Youth groups had called on the federal and state governments to grant amnesty to protesters arrested across the country, saying “it is to avoid further waste of scarce resources.”
The Group also called on President Tinubu and northern state’ governors to establish a N250 billion Endowment for Technical and Vocational Training in all Islamiyya Schools across Northern Nigeria to help them get rehabilitated and reintegrated.
According to Yahaya “this call has become necessary on the face of the fact that most of those arrested are either poor ALMAJIRI children and or uneducated, unskilled and unemployed citizens who are all minors.
“We call for an urgent endowment fund for skills development and education of all minors in Nigeria: this has become necessary considering that the economic situation is hard for ordinary citizens.”
