A top Nigerian official in the northern state at the heart of the country's Islamic uprising says a new training program will be launched to reach a reservoir of angry and rootless young men easily recruited by Islamic extremists and transform them into productive members of society.
Zanna Mustapha, deputy governor of Borno state, said the program will try to stem the root causes of extremism in Borno, one of three northeastern states under a 3-month-old state of emergency.
A similar program has met with some success elsewhere in Nigeria but an opposition politician says the Borno program may be derailed by incompetence. There's also a risk that funds will be diverted in a country where corruption is endemic.
