Ekiti State Governor, Dr Kayode Fayemi on Thursday, took another look at the security challenges in the country, tracing the insurgency in the North and the piracy in the South to youth delinquency.
Delivering a lecture titled “Towards a Comprehensive National Security Strategy” at the National Institute of Policy and Strategic Studies (NIPSS) Kuru , on Thursday, the Governor asserted that a key security challenge before the nation is how to engage the youth and absorb
their energies in productive engagements to avoid losing a generation to criminality and insurrection.
Dr Fayemi who is a security expert expressed worries that the youth make up more than 70% of Nigeria’s population, a statistics which has significant implications for national security; stressing that the presence of young unemployed males sequestered in urban ghettos is a
predictor of both crime and conflict.
While stressing that unemployment creates a “vast pool of malcontents that can be recruited by politicians for private militias or that will fall into the hands of extremists and become tomorrow’s extremists”, the Governor said the teeming unemployed youths as well as the
proliferation of small arms make up an alignment of factors that make for a clear and present danger to our national security.
He said: “70% of Nigeria’s population is under 35 years of age. This statistics has significant implications for national security. Any state with an exceptionally high number of people between the ages of 15 and 25 has a far greater potential for unrest than a country with an average age of 40. The median age of our population is put at 17.9 years. Any country with a relatively high population of young males is more likely to generate both internal and external violence. This is not to say that every youthful nation is more prone to violence than an older neighbor”, he said.
While also noting that the national question is perhaps the greatest challenge to national security, Governor Fayemi said the nation’s crisis response and security emergency preparedness architecture is being undermined by a systemic deformity peculiar to Nigerian
federalism.
According to him, years of authoritarian rule have resulted in what has become known as unitary-federalism with the over-whelming influence of the centre in the affairs of the country, manifesting in various ways especially the over-centralization of security
administration.
Fayemi said: “For example, State governors are regarded as their states’ chief security officers with ultimate responsibility for keeping their citizens safe and secure. But in reality, governors have no command over any area of the Nigerian security apparatus. We have no control over the police, the armed forces, the paramilitary agencies or the security and intelligence departments. Control over all these agencies is centralised and vested in the federal presidency. Yet, consistent advocacy for professional policing and multi-level policing is often pooh-poohed by interested role-players and not for reasons related to
security management but often turf-control.”
While calling for cooperation among security agencies in the country, Fayemi said that emergence of neighbourhood vigilante groups now popularly known as civilian JTF (joint task force) which undertook to root insurgents out of their hiding places in their communities has paid off in the usefulness of local intelligence in dealing with a force that hides itself in the midst of the civilian population.
According to Fayemi, “Undoubtedly, every counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency operations require adequate information or intelligence on the terrorists and their disposition, their habits, their source(s) of support, including weapons, funding, and mercenaries; their ideology and ultimate goals, capabilities, membership and recruitment strategies; mode of operation; leadership, motivations; affiliations etc.
The stressed that the critical questions to ask include : how much do we know about Boko Haram? How coordinated is the information gathered by the various intelligence agencies? How objective is our assessment of the situation? He submitted that Nigerians have been saddled with too many conspiracy theories about Boko Haram internally, adding however, that “ we often depended on outsiders to do our job for us”.