A coalition of northern youth groups has called on President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to as a matter of urgency intervene in the ongoing arraignment, detention, and prosecution of underage #EndBadGovernance protesters nationwide.
It described the actions as inhumane and condescending.
The Founder of Yan-Almajiri Endowment Initiative and BoT Chairman, Coalition of Northern Youths Groups, Yahaya Mohammed Usman made this appeal in a statement in Minna.
Usman decried the ill-treatment and traumatic state the minors looked, insisting, “they look very sick and are wriggling in pain on the floor of the court.”
Recall 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.
Earlier, in August 2024, the Coalition had called on the federal and state governments to grant amnesty to protesters arrested across the country to avoid further waste of scarce resources.
The Group also urged President Tinubu and northern state governors to establish a N250bn Endowment for Technical and Vocational Training in all Islamiyya Schools across Northern Nigeria to help them get rehabilitated and reintegrated.
Usman further said “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.”