At least 45 former street urchins popularly known as “Area Boys” and drug addicts have been reformed and graduated from the Lagos State Rehabilitation and Skills Acquisition Centre, Tekunle Lagos.

The graduands acquired skills in areas such as carpentry, electrical installatin, vulcanizing, tailoring, shoe-making, cane and fibre, barbing and agricultural practices among others.

Each of the graduands was given N10,000 as take-off grant and relevant equipment to enhance their vocational work.

Speaker, Lagos State House of Assembly, Hon. Adeyemi Ikuforiji at the graduation ceremony said the event was a milestone in the state’s effort to address the challenge of “disappointed human capital minds as envisioned by the dysfunctional activities of social miscreants, otherwise known as Area Boys on our major streets.”

Ikuforiji, whose speech was read by the Special Adviser to the Governor on Youth, Sports and Social Development, Dr Dolapo Badru, said the grant and equipment given to the graduands would assist them in settling down after graduation.

He appealed to corporate bodies and others to support and embrace the noble programme of the state in rehabilitating “these set of our challenged youths.”

Commissioner for Youth, Sports and Social Development, Prince Ademola Adanigi-Adele, restated government’s commitment to addressing “a socially dysfunctional issue that affected the state negatively by engaging youths who were caught in the web of this vicious cycle in a more meaningful endeavour that would turn their lives around and make them useful to the society.”

According to him, the graduation had demonstrated government’s genuine determination to absorb people with deviant behaviour, turn them around and empower them to be useful to themselves and called on local government chairmen to support government’s initiative.