‘Deploy police officers to guard schools,’ Atiku tells Nigerian govt

Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar on Tuesday urged the Federal Government to deploy police officers on non-essential duties to protect schools from armed bandits in the country.

Atiku, who made the call on his Twitter handle, was reacting to a statement credited to the Minister of State for Education, Chukwuemeka Nwajiuba, on the government’s inability to secure every school in the country.

He said the deployment of police officers to schools would save the facilities from bandits’ onslaughts.

The ex-Vice President wrote: “The FG may think they cannot protect all schools, but in actual fact, they can. It is a matter of leadership priority. Children are our greatest asset.

READ ALSO: Paying ransom to bandits, recipe for disaster —Atiku warns FG

“If we reassign police officers currently engaged in non-essential guard duties for individuals to schools in the affected states, the object can be achieved.

“Recent figures released by the National Bureau of Statistics reveal that Nigeria now has an all-time high unemployment rate of 33.2 percent, up from 8.4 percent in 2015.

“Rather than think we cannot secure all our schools, let us kill two birds with one stone and massively recruit more police officers to provide the needed security.”

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