Prelate of the Methodist Church Nigeria, Dr Samuel Chukwuemeka Kalu Uche, has urged the Federal Government to immediately declare a state of emergency on unemployment in the country and follow it immediately with recruitment of 3,000 persons in each of the 774 LGAs in the country.

He expressed worry over the growing rate of unemployment in the country, especially among the educated youths, attributing the growing wave of various crimes in the country to them as a result of their plight, stressing that an’’ idle mind is the devil’s workshop.’’

He spoke yesterday at the Methodist Church Training Institute, Umuahia, Abia state during the advocacy visit of the state Chapter of the National Orientation Agency [NOA] led by the Director, Dr Ngozi Okechukwu to the Prelate.

The advocacy visit was tagged “ Building A People Of Peace: Towards Enhancing National Security”.

The prelate, who stated that Nigeria is undergoing excruciating traumatizing experience due to prevailing insecurity, blamed the federal, state and local governments for not thinking effectively about the masses.

The prelate, who spoke in the presence of the Church Lay President Sir Ifeanyi Okechukwu, recommended aggressive farming, recruitment of more people to man the country’s porous borders, increasing the extant police ratio from 1 to 8,000 ratio to 1: to 1000 and bringing the total number of police personnel to two million.

In her address, the state NOA Director (Mrs. Okechukwu) said that the advocacy visit was a continuation of the agency’s nationwide efforts in fighting insecurity and gendering peace in the country.

She said that while the NOA believes that if the church gets more committed to national security campaign, there would be transformation and sustainable stability.

According to her, it was not surprising that Nigeria, over the decades, witnessed among others, extremely-violent dimensions of political violence, insurgency, ethnic and religious conflict, militancy, menace of open grazing, unemployment, drug abuse, lopsided development, political and socio-economic marginalisation, inept leadership, judicial corruption and more recently, banditry and kidnapping which are posing significant threats to national peace.