•Ooni blames poor leadership, frustration
From Molly Kilete, Abuja
Sultan of Sokoto, Dr. Muhammad Sa’ad Abubakar, has said corruption, hunger, among other factors, are fuelling insecurity in the country.
Sultan Abubakar said this at the 2017 National Security Summit on farmers/pastoralist clashes, kidnapping and other forms of violent crimes and bank security in Nigeria, which held in Abuja, yesterday.
The monarch also called on the Federal Government to implement recommendations of past summits.
“We have never been short of recommendations to solve our problems but we have not been committed and sincere. Our problem is implementation of the decisions we talk”.
“Security must be placed above personal liberty” and for no reason should anyone hide under the guise of religion to undermine national security.
He warned that security challenges should be seen beyond what have already been overemphasized overtime, even as labeled the social media as a security threat which he said propagated fake news that could easily instigate unwarranted violence
He equally called on the media to be responsible in discharging their duties and said the security agencies must device proper mechanism to track down cariers of fake news in the social media.
The sultan while calling on political leaders and the judiciary to “play according to the rules of the the book” in discharging their duties, urged them to be more patriotic to the country above personal gains and expressed the hope that the summit would achieved the desired results.
In his address, Ooni of Ife, Oba Adeyeye Enitan Ogunwusi attributed incessant crimes and security challenges bedeviling the country to poor leadership, moral decadence, frustration on the part of the people and hunger.
“We should ask why are people who are frustrated engaged in criminality. Are we fair in our dealings with the people? asked Ojaja II who said, though security matters are very germain to national development, there is the need for social justice so that the challenges will not keep piling up year in year out and this must be done collectively.
The monarch noted that government has invested huge sums of money in combating insecurity in the country but lamented lack of morals, values and social justice which are key ingredients to building a crime free society which no one is paying attention.
Inspector General of Police(IGP), Ibrahim Idris, lamented ] huge shortfall in personnel which was below the United Nations standard of one police officer to 400, citizens.
To bridge the gap, Idris said that the Nigerian police force need to recruit an additional 155,000, personnel to effectively place Nigerian population of approximately 182, million people.