**Lists 7 major culprits at Abuja Roundtable
By Harry Awurumibe, Editor, Abuja Bureau
Against the backdrop of rising insecurity in Nigeria, an expert in Strategic Management, Leadership and Governance Consultant, Professor Okey Ikechukwu has exonerated the Nigerian Army in particular and the nation’s military and security agencies from blame.
This is even as he has advocated for a greater synergy between the country’s military and the civilian population, pointing out that this is the only sure way of tackling from the root the spate of banditry and insurgency in Nigeria.
Prof Ikechukwu, Executive Director, Development Specs Academy (DSA) stated this in his paper titled: “Asymmetrical Dimensions of Security Challenges in a Nation with an Overstretched Military” which he delivered on Monday, the first day of the Two-Day Roundtable with the theme: Asymmetrical National Security Challenges, The Army and National Development holding at Nigerian Army Resource Centre, Asokoro, Abuja.
According to him, Nigerians must go beyond complaining and blaming the military, security agencies and, especially, the Nigerian Army and play their respective roles, arguing that beyond Security Architecture and Declaration of State of Emergency on Banditry and Insurgency, the civilian populace must learn to work in concert with the military to defeat insecurity.
Said he: “Let me also place it on record that the solutions to our current national security problems do not lie in the declaration of a State of emergency on national security.
“The verbal Declaration of a State of Emergency will not make uncooperative communities to suddenly start plying the military and security agencies with the local intelligence they have been withholding for a long time now. It will not improve the availability of arms and ammunition”.
He also said the Declaration of a State of Emergency on Insecurity will not dramatically raise the morale of officers and soldiers who are overstretched neither will it remove the fact that “the job of our men in uniform is further complicated by the missteps of a civilian ruling elite that has created a massive pool of impoverished, unemployed, underemployed and unemployable youths with the wrong social skills”.
Meanwhile, the much sought-after Policy and Strategy expert has posited that there is nothing mysterious about the causes of insecurity in Nigeria at the moment, stating that the people are to blame for the state of affairs.
Prof Ikechukwu disclosed that seven major culprits are responsible for the banditry and insurgency in Nigeria with what he labelled Out-of-Touch elite leadership, Unemployment and Collapse of Education being the hydra-headed monster breeding insecurity in the country.
Said he: “There is nothing mysterious about the causes of insecurity in Nigeria today. The seven major culprits in this regard are:
Out-of-Touch elite (not just political) leadership;
Poverty and unemployment;
Collapse of education;
Poor national planning;
Episodic and Regime Development plans;
Personalization of national resources; and
Religious bigotry.
“We see this every day and everywhere. That is why no one shall waste our time her today in telling us the causes of insecurity, quoting various authorities on the subject and telling us about its effects on the economy or the welfare of the people. We are the people.
“We know the effects. We cannot safely, or walk the streets without fear of one misfortune or the other. So, we know.
Speaking further, he said understanding the Issues is key, pointing out that: “Unless the citizenry fully understands core national security issues, including especially the roles and responsibility of the key actors in the activity chain, there will always be dysfunctionalities in the national security relationship chain, including the civilian population.
“This is a Critical Success Factor for intelligence gathering at community and other levels. Once this role is observed in the breach, with some communities and community leaders even nurturing, and facilitating, the very security threat the army is trying to deal with, the problems will only fester and get worse.
“As it stands today, the Nigerian Army is the public face of the war against banditry and insecurity. It has also become the people’s scapegoat, or “Whipping Boy” for everything wrong with the safety of lives and property in Nigeria today. This cannot be right”.
Prof Ikechukwu therefore said:”Let us, therefore, work together here to drive this Third-Party initiative and distil Implementable Action Points (IAPs) on pressing national security challenges. READ ALSO:
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Speaking on the reason for the Roundtable, he said it is to help create, drive and sustain a highly respected multimedia media platform, that simultaneously deploys the print, electronic and digital media to drive national interest narratives in an objective and professional manner.
“Our task in this RoundTable is to bring out some overlooked aspects of the security challenges facing the nation, and offer specific and implementable, solutions to them.
“They include the wrong attitudes of the civil populace towards the military and security agencies, conspiracy with embedded targets in communities, refusal to support security operations with local intelligence, the targeting of military personnel for hostile civilian attention, deliberate misrepresentation of the activities and achievements of the Nigerian Army through fake news, misinformation and disinformation, among others.
We are to help create a groundswell of that aspect of public communication that is usually best described as National Interest Communication without Propaganda (NIC–P)”.
