Is it just me but I am yet to hear President Tinubu utter one word about Nigeria’s Almajiri problem. I suggest he sends a Nigerian Street Urchin Bill that looks like this to the National Assembly

Ayo Akinfe

[1] Like Brazil did in the 1900s, Nigeria currently has a street urchin programme. We aim to have this matter resolved by 2030, with every young person either in full time training, education or employment

[2] We will create a Nigerian Border Guard and seek to recruit 2m of these youths into it. Their first task would be to plant trees across Nigeria’s northern border all the way from Kebbi to Adamawa states. These trees, which shall be painted in Nigeria’s colour will mark our territorial borders

[3] Throughout the year, this Border Guard will repaint these trees and will patrol these borders. It will be their job to monitor movement in and out of the country along Nigeria’s northern border

[4] According to the National Council for the Welfare of the Destitute, there are 7m Almajiris in northern Nigeria. We will seek to soak up a further 3m with an unprecedented public works programme. We will employ them to build a Sokoto to Maiduguri high speed railway line. This project will create at least another 2m ancillary jobs

[5] We will also designate Taraba State as a wildlife protection zone with about half of its territory ring-fenced. It will serve as an animal sanctuary and will be protected by an army of Nigerian Wildlife Rangers. We will then recruit 500,000 of such rangers with a mandate to ensure there is zero poaching in Nigeria. They will tag every animal in this reserve

[6] Every local government area in northern Nigeria will have a technical vocation college where youths are trained in a variety of skills from plumbing, to bricklaying to carpentry, etc. The idea will be that nobody is left without a skill that can earn them a living

[7] We will open up youth camps for orphans and urchins who have no parents or guardians. It is clear that at the moment, such youths are falling into the hands of Boko Haram, Miyetti Allah and kidnappers. There will be technical colleges in all these their youth camps so these youths are trained

[8] We will establish four massive cattle ranches in Niger, Kano, Borno and Yobe states. They would have on site veterinary clinics, leather processing plants, meat abattoirs, animal feed compounding plants and meat packaging factories. We will look to employ about 2m youths in this industry as part of a plan to make Nigeria a major leather goods producer and exporter

[9] We will cost this programme and if it costs say $20bn, we will ask the northern elite to come up with a quarter of the mone and the 19 northern state governments with another quarter. Then, the federal government will come up with a quarter of the funding too, while the rest of the finance will be sought from private investors

[10] To get the project going, we will approach the Arab League and the Organisation of Islamic Conference for seed money. We believe the Arab world owes Nigeria big time as they brought their faith to us but have not brought along their other perks. Also, Nigeria is one of the biggest cash cows for the Saudi Arabian tourist industry given the number of pilgrims we send there every year