Plateau State Governor Caleb Muftwang announced that the 19 northern governors in Nigeria will initiate discussions on the region’s high birth rate.
He emphasized the need for measures to ensure the education and welfare of the children being born in the region.
“We are sitting on a time bomb,” Muftwang said on Channels Television’s Sunrise Daily on Tuesday, warning that the lack of infrastructure for human capital development of the youth bulge in the region may escalate banditry and terrorism ubiquitous in the three geopolitical zones of northern Nigeria.
He also said some of the hoodlums who disrupted the “peaceful” #EndBadGovernance protests in the state were external elements from outside the state.
The governor said the elite in the north failed to take responsibility for the young population in the region, allowing some criminally minded persons to control the youth bulge and indoctrinate them into insurgency and banditry.
Muftwang said, “We don’t have an option. At this point, we must take the bull by the horn. I am pretty sure that a lot of the northern elite do not have their children on the streets; they send their children to elite schools locally and internationally.
“If that is the situation, it is not so much about how many children you give birth to, but that we must be able to put measures in place that if you give birth to children, you must take responsibility for those children. It must be a carrot-and-stick strategy that we’ll put in place.
“I don’t want to say this is the maximum number of children you must have. That is a dialogue that is beyond me but I can assure you that from the Forum of Northern Governors, we are going to initiate this dialogue. We are going to make sure we broaden it to a national consultation.
“We must know that religion has a responsibility to society and we must ensure that religion does not become a setback to society. We must then be able to bring religious leaders in tandem with global realities.”
Governor Muftwang stated that the government will hold parents accountable for out-of-school children, assuring residents that no willing child will be uneducated by the time he leaves office in 2027.
He emphasized that one of the key strategies to combat poverty is through agriculture and food security. However, he acknowledged that banditry has posed a significant challenge. He stressed the importance of reclaiming lands and putting them to productive use to ensure food security.