The Executive Secretary, National Commission for Nomadic Education (NCNE), Professor Rashid Aderinoye, has identified educating youthful and adult nomads as the panacea for ending cattle rustling in Nigeria.
While urging the federal government to give prompt and sincere attention to this, he said if the nation failed to educate the youth and children of pastoralist it would be difficult for them to in turn correct the attitude of their children.
Aderinoye stated this while speaking to journalists in Kaduna, on Tuesday, at the opening ceremony of a 3-day professional capacity development workshop for members of School Based Management Committee (SBMC) and Relevant Stakeholders on New Strategies for Effective Implementation of Nomadic Education Programme at Community (field) level.
”If we fail to educate them they will not be able to support their children. When it comes to cattle rustling some of these pastoralists are involved; they need to be properly educated about the evils of rustling cattle.
“When it comes to the issue of banditry, they need to be educated on the evils of banditry, and is better we catch them young. That is the essence of making sure that the children are motivated to go to school.
“When we educate them on various aspects of life, then will have good future leaders, rather than bad ones, and that is the essence of this programme, Aderinoye explained.
He said that “apart from academic lessons that the commission is giving to the nomads, it has begun to teach them different skills such as bee-keeping, making of shea butter, fashion design and so many others.
“The plan is such that the women will be engaged in processing milk, yoghurt etc., while the commission will buy from them”.
In his speech, Kaduna State Commissioner of Education Dr. Shehu Usman, said the workshop was another testimony of the commission’s efforts of empowering the communities to acquire practical skills and widen their horizon of seeing governance and educational provision as a collective responsibility.
He disclosed that “Kaduna State has currently over two hundred and eighty three (283) nomadic schools spread across the twenty three (23) local government areas of the state with a total pupils enrolment of 13,345 and 1,193).
