By Ayo Alonge
Bothered by the spate of banditry and insurgency currently ravaging the country, security experts and other stakeholders have proffered a way out.
This was the crux of the 4th annual public lecture of the BAT Communications Company, with the theme: ‘Security Challenges and Implications on National Development’, held in Lagos, recently.
Highlighting tolerance and peaceful co-existence as panacea for national development and the way out of security challenges, guest speakers took turns to lampoon the rate of insecurity, saying its remote cause is political, ethic and religious intolerance.
In his opening speech, the Editor-in-Chief of Integrity Reporters Newspaper, Adewale Oguniran, said the problem of insecurity in Nigeria is not peculiar to one geo-political zone, as the challenge could be seen in the socio-economic and political lives of the citizens in the six geo-political zones of the country.
‘Today is an occasion for us to once again take a look at one of the problems confronting our dear nation -the ugly situation of insecurity, which has been kicking us back and forth in the past few years. This is the best time for us to discuss ‘Security Challenge and Implication on National Development,’ he said.
The guest speaker, a former chairman of Police Equipment Foundation, Chief Kenny Martins, in his address, claimed that Nigerians spend an estimated N1trillion, annually, to provide security for themselves and their property. He, however, suggested a way out of the doldrums.
‘Every day, we are lectured that security is a collective responsibility. We are doing our bit, using tall fences and barbed wires to protect our houses, spending trillions of naira every year to hire security guards as well as purchasing and installing very expensive security devices to protect our businesses, residential premises and estates.
‘With the current state of insecurity in our country, we are losing a lot economically, and investors are scared to come in and invest. There is no other way to end the menace of insecurity in the country except we create jobs for our teeming unemployed youths, and we can only achieve this when we revive our moribund industries across the country.
‘The state actors must be blamed for the high rate of insecurity in the country today. The moment government at all levels starts seeing insecurity as a challenge to their power, the problem will die naturally,’ said Martins.
He urged the government at all levels to meet the expectations of protecting lives and property.
His words: ‘On the issue of insecurity, we need to excuse God. If the governments at the federal, state and local want to end insecurity today, they will. So, how is that God’s business?’
Also present at the event for the unveiling of a new newspaper, Integrity Reporters, were prominent Nigerians drawn from the media and other walks of life.