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| President Goodluck Jonathan |
Former President Goodluck Jonathan has urged the Federal Government to revive two signature initiatives from his administration—the Almajiri education programme and the Great Green Wall project—as practical tools to tackle insecurity and create jobs. Speaking through his former Chief of Staff, Mike Oghiadomhe, at the public presentation of Beyond the Bullets: Policing Terrorism in a Democratic System by former Inspector-General of Police Mohammed Abubakar in Abuja, Jonathan framed the programmes as responses to the socio-economic drivers of violence rather than mere side projects.
“My administration engaged in the establishment of Almajiri schools, aimed at providing skills to millions of youth population beyond religious education only,” he said. The goal was to equip young people to earn a living and shrink the pool available for recruitment into violent crime. On the Great Green Wall, he noted it could arrest desertification, expand fertile land for farming and animal husbandry, and generate employment for hundreds of thousands. “I therefore use this opportunity to call on government to revisit and review these programmes.”
The timing of the call is deliberate. Nigeria continues to confront layered insecurity—Boko Haram and Islamic State West Africa Province in the North-East, banditry in the North-West, farmer-herder conflicts, and kidnappings nationwide.
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Successive governments have prioritised kinetic responses. Jonathan’s intervention, alongside parallel remarks from Africa’s richest man Aliko Dangote and Abubakar himself, underscores a growing consensus: force alone is insufficient when poverty, out-of-school children, environmental degradation and youth unemployment remain structural.
The Almajiri System: From Revered Tradition to National Vulnerability
The Almajiri (or Tsangaya) system has deep roots in Northern Nigeria’s pre-colonial Islamic scholarship.
Boys traditionally left home to study the Qur’an under a mallam, living simply and sometimes seeking alms. In its classical form it produced scholars and community leaders. Over decades, however, demographic pressure, poverty, weak state capacity and parental inability to support large families transformed it. Millions of children now live in under-regulated centres, often combining rote religious learning with street begging.
Estimates of the Almajiri population vary, but they form a large share of Nigeria’s out-of-school children—officially among the highest numbers globally. Many lack literacy, numeracy, vocational skills or formal certification. Local governments rarely employ them even as messengers. Analysts and security experts have long linked this cohort to recruitment risks for extremist groups and criminal networks. Jonathan has repeatedly described the situation in stark terms: during his time in office he saw these youths as a “keg of gunpowder.” His administration’s response was the Integrated Almajiri Education Programme. Between roughly 2010 and 2015, the Federal Government, largely through the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC) and TETFund, constructed and equipped around 157 model Almajiri/Tsangaya schools across the North and some southern states. These facilities added Western subjects—English, mathematics, science, vocational skills—while preserving Qur’anic study. The curriculum was designed so graduates could progress into further education or the job market.
Implementation faced obstacles. Many schools were handed to state governments without strong ongoing federal oversight or sustainable funding.
Traditional Alarammis (Qur’anic teachers) were not always fully engaged. After 2015, a significant proportion of the facilities fell into disrepair, abandonment or alternative use—some reportedly converted to offices or stores. In late 2025 the Federal Government, through the National Commission for Almajiri and Out-of-School Children Education, began systematic recovery of the 157 schools for rehabilitation. Recent policy moves under the current administration include a National Policy for the Enhancement of Almajiri Education that bans street begging by learners, mandates literacy, numeracy, digital skills and vocational training, and aims to formalise centres without erasing their religious character. Some states, such as Jigawa, have expanded inclusive Tsangaya models that combine Qur’anic learning with practical skills and welfare support.
Jonathan’s renewed advocacy sits within this evolving landscape. He has argued that states should modify rather than discard the model according to local realities, because a country that fails to invest in functional youth education will spend far more managing insecurity.
The Great Green Wall: Environment as Security Infrastructure
The second programme Jonathan highlighted is Nigeria’s contribution to the African Union’s Great Green Wall of the Sahara and Sahel. Conceived as a vast mosaic of restored land stretching from Senegal to Djibouti, the initiative aims by 2030 to restore 100 million hectares of degraded land, sequester 250 million tonnes of carbon and create 10 million green jobs. Nigeria’s National Agency for the Great Green Wall (NAGGW), established by Act in 2015, focuses on 11 frontline northern states most affected by desertification: Adamawa, Bauchi, Borno, Gombe, Jigawa, Kano, Katsina, Kebbi, Sokoto, Yobe and Zamfara.
Jonathan’s government approved the national programme in 2012. The ambition was to create contiguous and support green belts that halt desert encroachment, improve soil fertility, support crop and livestock production, and generate rural employment. Progress has been uneven, constrained by funding, coordination and the sheer scale of land degradation. Recent years have seen renewed activity: relocation of NAGGW operational headquarters to Kano for closer proximity to the work, distribution of millions of date-palm seedlings with a target of 50 million by 2030, and participation in larger international packages. A $78 million Global Environment Facility programme announced in 2026, coordinated largely by UNEP, is supporting land restoration across nine Sahelian countries including Nigeria and aims to benefit millions of people. Additional Green Climate Fund-backed projects such as SURAGGWA further scale resilience and non-timber forest product value chains.
Environmental restoration is not peripheral to security. Desertification reduces arable land and grazing resources, intensifying competition between farmers and herders and pushing some communities into desperation. Employment in tree planting, nursery management, sustainable agriculture and related value chains offers an alternative livelihood pathway for the same demographic that Almajiri reforms target.
Jobs, Force and Democratic Guardrails
At the same event Aliko Dangote reinforced the economic argument. “If you don’t create jobs, it’s difficult to fight terrorism and get it out of the way,” he said. Entrepreneurs, he argued, must partner with government to generate growth and prosperity alongside security operations. He cited UNICEF figures putting cumulative economic losses from the North-East conflict at around $100 billion—and suggested the true figure, once agriculture and broader impacts are counted, is higher. “Fighting terrorism is not only for the government alone, but it’s our collective responsibility.”
Former IGP Mohammed Abubakar’s book and remarks supplied the institutional counterpoint. Drawing on his experience, he insisted that counter-terrorism must not treat entire communities as suspects. “When fear becomes policy, discrimination becomes security.” Democratic institutions—courts, legislature, media, civil society—are not obstacles but “the ground rails that prevent security from becoming domination.”
Effective operations require coordination, credible intelligence, accountability and respect for human dignity. “Democracies must answer violence with process.”
Jonathan placed these ideas in a longer historical frame: terrorism is a continuing national and global challenge that demands sustained commitment, institutional learning and cooperation across successive administrations rather than ownership by any single government.
Analysis: Continuity, Politics and Practical Barriers
Jonathan’s call is neither purely nostalgic nor purely partisan. The Almajiri schools and Great Green Wall were ambitious attempts to address root causes at a time when Boko Haram was escalating. Their partial success and subsequent neglect illustrate a recurring Nigerian pattern: bold federal initiatives that lose momentum when political ownership changes or when state-level capacity and incentives are weak. Recovery efforts for the schools and recent policy frameworks suggest the current government recognises the problem. Scaling vocational integration, ensuring consistent funding, engaging traditional teachers as partners rather than bystanders, and linking environmental restoration to measurable youth employment will determine whether revival delivers results.
Critics of the original Almajiri model sometimes argue it under-estimated cultural resistance or over-relied on physical infrastructure without sufficient attention to teacher incentives, community ownership and follow-through. Supporters counter that the alternative—leaving millions of boys outside any structured path to skills and citizenship—has proven costlier in both human and security terms.
Similar debates surround the Green Wall: ambitious continental targets require patient, multi-decade investment rather than short political cycles.
What unites the voices at the Abuja event is recognition that kinetic force, while necessary against active threats, cannot substitute for education that produces employable citizens or landscapes that support livelihoods. Jonathan’s programmes were imperfect instruments. Revisited with better governance, stronger state-federal partnership, private-sector job creation and democratic safeguards, they remain relevant levers.
In a country where youth demographics and environmental stress continue to shape insecurity, the choice is not between bullets and books or between security and the environment. It is whether Nigeria will treat the underlying drivers with the same seriousness it applies to the symptoms.
Samuel O. Sulaimon is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of Naijapiz. He covers News, Sports, Finance, Faiths, Education, Politics and Technology.
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