The Katsina state governor, Dikko Umar Radda, has declared that poverty and unemployment were the major factors of the lingering insecurity in the country.
Radda made the declaration Friday in Gusau while delivering a second pre-convocation lecture organised by Federal University Gusau on Friday entitled Insecurity and Educational Instability in Nigeria; The Way Forward.
He noted that every year, millions of young Nigerians graduated in the higher institutions across the country, but “have increasingly found it difficult to obtain white-collar employment.”
“Many Nigerian graduates start hitting the streets of the country’s largest cities in quest of jobs that aren’t easily available after completing the mandatory one-year national youth service programme.
“When they can’t find work, most of these young people get frustrated and start looking for other ways to make ends meet a situation which makes them turn to illegal crimes like armed robbery, kidnapping for ransom, yahoo yahoo, and computer fraud, among others,” he said.
Governor Dikko further identified weak/feeble security structure as another factor contributing to the nation’s insecurity.
“It is sad to note the security personnel who confront terrorists and other criminal elements are poorly motivated, they lack adequate training and retraining, with no access to advanced weaponry that would allow them to take on criminal organisations such as armed bandits and Boko Haram, among others.”
He said non-state actors with a motley crowd, like members of Boko Haram, possessed more advanced weaponry than Nigerian security personnel.
“This is ridiculous; it may help to explain why these criminals easily assault helpless and innocent Nigerians with reckless abandon.
“The absence of coordination among security agencies fighting insecurity is also seen as a weak point in the nation’s security architecture. Inter-agency rivalry is common and has negative impact on how well agencies work to reduce insecurity.”
The governor lamented that enormous sums of money made available for the purchase of weapons had been embezzled and mismanaged, with the offenders not receiving enough punishment.
He also noted that the porosity of the nation’s borders was a contributor to the insecurity.
“These personnel take bribes and permit them to enter the nation legally from Mali, Chad, the Benin Republic, and Niger and additionally, some people enter the nation under the cover of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Protocol on Transhumance while disguising as cattle herders.”
Governor Radda suggested that “Nigerian intelligence, policing, and security communities must act professionally in order to gather intelligence on school child abductions using the models of crime-soft-spot, crime-temporary-spot, crime-hot-spot, and crime-chronic-spot.”
“They must also act quickly and pro-actively rather than reactively.”
He also called on the nation’s security personnel to act with professionalism and ward off political influence from misguided members of the political elite who might wish to evade the intelligence acquired for personal gains, thereby allowing crime to continue.
“Any society’s effort to prevent crime depends on professionalism, and in order to accomplish the overarching objective of national security, the security agencies must collaborate as a single unit.
Solution
“The solutions to the issue of insecurity include; sound governance, cooperation between security agencies, delivering high-quality instruction, religious and ethnic tolerance, creation of jobs, fair distribution of resources throughout the nation’s states and regions and eradicating poverty.”
