Scout Association Seeks FG’s Approval to Relocate to Bandits’ Den

Olawale Ajimotokan in Abuja

The Scout Association of Nigeria (TSAN) has requested the federal government to allow it to convert the sprawling forest along the Abuja Airport-Kaduna Road where people are being kidnapped to its national headquarters.

The Chief Scout Commissioner of TSAN, Hon Dave Padopads-Awunah, tabled the request yesterday at a press conference on the planned induction and decoration of President Muhammadu Buhari as National Patron of TSAN and an Ambassador of Messenger of Peace.

“Nigerian scouts are requesting 1,000 hectares of land. We have seen the place where people are being kidnapped in the forest along Abuja Airport-Kaduna Road. We are asking government to allocate that land to us as we will be building our National Towers which will be our scout headquarters. We shall also turn it into children amusement park and water park. We also want a wildlife park because as scouts, we don’t cage animals. Rather than a zoo, we believe in a wild-life for animals to exist,” Padopads-Awunah said.

He said also noted that the criminality bedeviling the country would have been put under check if the federal government had incorporated scouting into its security plan.

TSAN, which presently boasts of three million members in Nigeria, also decried the prevalence of drug addiction and organ harvesting among Nigerian youths.

Padopads-Awunah described drug abuse as a major cankerworm sinking the country. He noted that the situation had degenerated  to the extent that some Nigerian youths now smoke grey hair which is wrapped and mixed with lizard faeces.

He said the association is sensitising children to the danger of drugs across the country by using one child who is a scout to influence other children.

He also lamented that the clear absence of the role of scouting in tailoring the minds of young people has caused inexplicable crisis of youth management including prostitution and human trafficking.