My plans for Lagos ‘area boys’ if voted into power -Pearse

The gubernatorial candidate of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) in Lagos State, Dr Adetokunbo Pearse, has said that he will train and engage street urchins popularly called “area boys” in the state if voted into power in the March 2 governorship election. Pearse made the pledge on Monday in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Lagos. According to him, his planned massive investment in education to combat problems of poverty, hunger and security in the state would cover training and retraining of the “area boys”. “Area Boys in the state will be engaged with vocational trainings and we shall employ them. “Many of these miscreants have a lot to offer the state. Some of them are embodiments of talents and gifts that can be harnessed to benefit themselves and the state. “Many of these area boys and girls on the streets are byproducts of unemployment. We will set up vocational training schools for them. “When we arrest them, we will not go and put them in jail. We will re-train them. We will send them to schools, whichever one they want to go-vocation or technical. “We will use this to reduce the number in the streets,” Pearse, a university teacher said. The candidate, who noted that many of the miscreants had one training or the other, said his government would create an enabling environment for them to practice their trainings if they so wanted. According to him, many of these ‘area boys’ are electricians, vulcanisers, carpenters, farmers among other professions, who cannot find jobs. He added that if voted as the next governor of Lagos State, he would increase funding for education, especially vocational and technical education, to reduce unemployment. He said that the state had suffered enough security threats posed to her by the increasing number of ‘area boys’ across streets and communities.