The national leader of the All Progressives Congress(APC) , Bola Tinubu has made a U-turn over his expression at the 12th colloquium to celebrate his 69th, that the federal government should recruit fifty million youths into the military to combat insecurity that is ravaging the nation.
According to the former Lagos State governor, the insurgents and bandits are taking advantage of the high unemployment in the country and are recruiting the youths to indulge in their criminal activities.
However, a statement by his Media Aide, Tunde Rahman has, reversed the statement, saying the former governor meant fifty thousand, and not fifty million as widely reported.
According to the statement, what the APC stalwart meant was an urge to the Federal Government to recruit 50,000 youths into the various national security agencies, including the Police and the Nigerian Army.
“Speaking at the event, Asiwaju Tinubu canvassed the urgent need to combine employment and national security policy by the recruitment of five million youths in all aspects of nation-building, ranging from infrastructural development to agricultural modernization.
“He believes that the more job opportunities are presented to our youth the less some of them will be tempted into illegal and dangerous activities.
“As part of this overall approach, he believes that eligible youth should be recruited into the armed forces, police and other security agencies to augment the functional capacity of our security apparatus thus ensuring the better security and safety of our people.
“Asiwaju seeks the expansion of security personnel by 50,000 for the armed forces not the N50 million that was mentioned in error. It was an accidental verbal mistake of which we all commit from time to time especially when reciting a series of large numerical figures.
“He did not mean N50 million, which is almost a quarter of our total population,” he stated.
He therefore apologized for confusion.
“Please forgive any confusion due to this innocent error. The most vital thing is that he set forth a wise and timely approach that would help us face two of today’s stiffest challenges. It is in the spirit that we hope you view and assess his proposal for it seeks to provide a way for more youths to participate in building a greater, safer and more prosperous country,” he added.
