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The National Agency for Science and Engineering Infrastructure (NASENI) and the Yobe State University, Damaturu, have agreed to deploy technology and engineering tools in the North East to create jobs and dissuade them from being for terrorism.
When the Vice Chancellor of the university, Prof. Yakubu Muhktar, and his team visited the headquarters of NASENI at the weekend, Executive Vice Chairman of the agency, Professor Mohammed Haruna, said insurgency in the North East continued largely because of high rate of unemployment in the region.
“The absence of viable economic alternatives for the youths and men in those areas has made them vulnerable to crime,” he said, adding that if the mineral resources available in the North East, especially in Yobe, were harnessed using the technology in NASENI, the youths would be gainfully employed and turn away from insurgency which advertently exposes them to danger,” he said.
Meanwhile, the Nigerian Army Commandant, Operation Safe Corridor (OSC), Brig-Gen. Musa Ibrahim, has said that 608 repentant Boko Haram terrorists were undergoing de-radicalisation and rehabilitation for onward integration into society.
According to him, the Malam/Sidi Rehabilitation and Training Centre is run by OSC in Gombe.
He disclosed this on Saturday, while briefing the Managing Director of North East Development Commission (NEDC), Mohammed Alkali, on training centre’s de-radicalisation programme for repentant Boko Haram terrorists.
Ibrahim added that 14 of the repentant terrorists were nationals of Cameroon, Chad and Niger.
