Historicizing and Prognosticating Education and Internal Security Challenges in Nigeria

Historicizing and Prognosticating Education and Internal Security Challenges in Nigeria

 

Yakubu A. Ochefu Ph.D.,

Fellow Historical Society of Nigeria (FHSN), Member, Nigeria Academy of Letters (MNAL)

 

Introduction

I will discuss the subject of education and internal security in Nigeria from a historical perspective, and prognosticate what is likely to happen if we do not address some of the challenges with the ideas that I will share. I do not intend to dabble into any definitional or conceptual issues. I take the liberty to assume that in an audience such as this, the meaning of keywords of the subject under discussion (education and internal security), is well known. I will proceed first by dealing with the various types of internal security challenges that have confronted us since 1960. Undertaking this historical journey will reveal that many of these challenges date far back and are rooted in one word: injustice (real or perceived). The challenges also seem to roll over from one decade to another, and from one zone to another. Thus, when kidnapping was rampant in the Niger Delta between 2000 and 2005, it was pretty rare in the northern parts of this country. Now, it is the other way round. I review the security governance framework and demonstrate how its constitution compounds the challenge of security provisioning.

 

Regarding education, I will x-ray our educational provisioning from two perspectives. One is from the ongoing disruption of higher education and its implications, and the second is on how weak the nexus between education and security is. I will conclude the lecture with ideas and suggestions on how we can use education to tackle the internal security challenges and make a prognosis of the near future of what may happen if we do not.

 

Historicising Internal Security Challenges in Nigeria

Since independence in 1960, Nigeria has recorded over thirty significant security challenges in the six decades. These range from politically or religiously motivated violence to criminal activities. The table below presents these challenges in historical sequence over a ten-year cycle.

 

 

 

 

 

SN Decade Security Challenge Location
1. 1960-1970 Tiv Riots Tiv Land
Political Crisis in Western Nigeria Western Nigeria
Declaration of Niger Delta Republic Niger Delta
First and Second Military Coups Nationwide
Pogroms and the Nigeria Civil War Nationwide
2 1970 -1980 Ugep Massacre Cross River State
3

 

 1980 -1990 Bakolori Peasants Uprising Sokoto State
Maitasine Kano, Bauchi, Borno, and Adamawa States
SAP Riots Across Nigeria
Kafanchan Riots Kaduna State
4 1990-2000 Zango-kataf Crisis Kaduna State
Ijo-Itsekiri Crisis Delta State
Bakassi Boys South East
Ogoni Uprising (MOSOP) Niger Delta
NADECO South West
First Jos Crisis Plateau State
Kwanta-kwanta bandits North East
Ife-Modakeke Osun State
Aguleri-Umuleri Anambra State
5 2000 -2010 Tiv-Jukun Crisis and Military Invasion of Tivland Benue/Taraba State
Odi Crisis Niger Delta
Kaduna (Sharia) Crisis Kaduna State
Second Jos Crisis Plateau State
MEND Niger Delta
Ogaminana Crisis Kogi State
2007 Election Riots Northern Nigeria
Boko Haram North East
6 2010 -2020 Farmers Herders Conflicts Across Nigeria
IPOB South East
ESN South East
ODUA Republic Agitation South West
Banditry North West

 

 

 

A quick look at the above inconclusive list shows that we can situate the nature and character of security challenges into four domains. These are the politically and economically motivated, the religiously motivated, criminally motivated, and those rooted in migration and settlements. A common thread that binds these four domains is injustice and its perceptions. Some have their roots in political, economic and socio-spatial arrangements that date back to colonialism. From the list, we can also discern that a number of them are recurring. The crisis in Jos started in the mid-1990s. Also, that of Southern Kaduna. Several scholars have opined that Boko Haram has its roots in the teachings of Mohammed Marwa, the founder and leader of the Maitasine sect that exploded all over northern Nigeria in the 1980s. If this is true, it means that forty years on, we have not learnt anything about managing the root causes of social problems that make people susceptible to religious manipulations. This is where the nexus between education and security comes to play.

 

Internal Security Sector Governance Framework

Security sector governance combines the concepts of ‘security’ and ‘governance’ and shares with the concept of human security, a concern for the welfare and safety of individuals and groups, which suffer most from a poorly governed security sector. From a governance perspective, security sector governance covers the public sector responsible for exercising the state monopoly of coercive power.1 From a purely security perspective, security sector governance reflects the broad notion of security because it does not cover the military alone but acknowledges the importance and predominant role of non-military security forces in some countries. Indeed, governments increasingly face security challenges in governance sectors that have not been viewed as relevant from a traditional security perspective. This includes the relevance of border security in the aftermath of trans-border Boko Haram raids or the activities of ethnic and political militias.

 

Security governance sets the security sector on two pillars: (a) the security forces and (b) the relevant civilian bodies and processes needed to manage them. These encompass: state institutions which have a formal mandate to ensure the safety of the State and its citizens against acts of violence and coercion (e.g., the armed forces, the police and paramilitary forces, the intelligence services and similar bodies; judicial and penal institutions) and elected and duly appointed civil authorities responsible for control and oversight (e.g., Parliament, the Executive, the Defence Ministry, etc.).

 

The security sector in most countries is generally divided into five main groups of actors:

  • Organisationslegally mandated to use force: armed forces, police, gendarmeries and other paramilitary forces, coast guards, territorial border guards, reserve or local security units (civil defence forces, national guards, presidential guards, official militias), military and civilian intelligence services, customs and other uniformed bodies such as secret services.
  • Justice and law-enforcement organisations:judiciary, correctional services, criminal investigation and prosecution services, and customary and traditional justice bodies.
  • Civil management and oversight bodies:president/prime minister; national security advisory bodies; legislatures and legislative committees; ministries of defence, internal affairs, justice, foreign affairs; office of the president/prime minister; financial management bodies (ministries of finance, budget offices, auditors’ general offices); relevant regional/provincial and local authorities, including customary and traditional authorities; and statutory civil society organisations such as human rights ombudsmen, police commissions, public complaints commissions.

 

In addition to the above, a number of actors directly or indirectly influence the content and implementation of security policy. They fall into two main groups: non-statutory security organisations and non-statutory civil society bodies.

  • Non-statutory security organisations:liberation armies; guerrilla armies; traditional militias; political party militias; self-defence organisations, including those based on regional, ethnic or religious affiliations; and private security companies.
  • Non-statutory civil society bodies:professional organisations, including trade unions; research/policy analysis organisations; advocacy organisations; the media; religious organisations; membership organisations; other non-governmental organisations; and the concerned public.

 

The Governance Challenges in the Security Sector.

The Governance Challenges in the Security sector in Nigeria cannot be treated outside of the historical context of the evolution of the Nigerian State and its operation since independence. As Fayemi and Olonisaki have pointed out, to understand the nature of the challenges and offer solutions, an assessment of Nigeria’s political environment is critical.2 For example, to what extent has the question of the nation been settled (national framework)? What do the constitution and other laws say about the control of the security forces (legal basis of the security sector)? What is the mission, purpose and nature of the security forces (professional stance of the security forces)? What is the interaction between the composition of security forces and the composition of society as a whole?; does the mission derived from security threats correspond to the size, composition and equipment of the security forces? Are resources used to fulfil the identified mission of the security forces, or are they misused in various ways (financial management of resources)? What are the roles of non-state security actors (positive and negative) and how effectively do the key oversight agencies – legislature, civilian bureaucracy, civil society – function in general (accountability)?3

 

It is clear from the above questions that fundamental challenges exist in the governance of the security sector and if these are not dealt with, the mandate to protect the lives and property of citizens will remain seriously compromised. I take the personal view that given the inherent legal and structural challenges facing the security sector in Nigeria that translates to how it is composed and operates, nobody will get an A* grade in providing explanations as to why they have performed so badly. The outcome of the sector’s poor performance is all too clear to us and warrants no further elaboration here. Before we proceed to proffer suggestions on how security governance can be improved, let us briefly discuss the education imperative and its role in determining security outcomes.

 

New Knowledge and Disruption of Education as a 21st Century Defining Moment

In the past forty years, the nature and character of higher education delivery globally have changed. We are in a world that is currently being driven at a breakneck pace, with new ways of doing old things, improvements and alternative solutions to virtually everything we need and do. Most segments of society are caught up in these changes and educational delivery is not an exception. Indeed, it has been suggested that the disruption of education as we know it today is going to count as one of the most defining moments of the 21st Century.3 I will point out just a few of them to buttress the point.

  • Universities and Academics are no longer the sole custodians of knowledge as we know it. Knowledge creation has been privatised and democratised. It is available for free or for a fee and on multiple channels.
  • New knowledge in terms of academic disciplines and or sub-disciplines, specialisations, content creation, and generation are no longer solely products of academic institutions such as the traditional Universities. Corporate Universities, publishing houses, research centres, think-tanks and non-governmental agencies are now hubs for generating new knowledge systems.
  • The ubiquity of education is now the buzzword. Face-to-face, Distance/Online/Blended learning. Education anytime, anywhere.
  • The 4th Industrial Revolution is changing radically the nature and character of the “world of work”. Competency, flexibility, and multi-tasking now drive that world more than anything else.
  • Creative thinking and problem-solving capabilities, team play, analytical/ communication skills and value addition to the “bottom line” are now more important to employers of labour than core subject matter knowledge.
  • Collaboration and sharing of knowledge sets, information, and skills, across multiple platforms in the electronic domain is becoming a dominant mode of academic engagements.
  • Individual courses rather than the degree itself have become more critical in the world of blended learning. The rigid academic compartments, pre-requisites and entry qualifications are giving way to individual interests, aptitude and creativity, forcing traditional Universities to unbundle their services to serve these needs.

To contextualise all these, some of the biggest companies in the world in terms of valuation, such as Alphabet Inc (Google), Apple, Meta (Facebook), Microsoft, and Amazon, have stated that they now no longer require University degrees as entry requirements to work there. More so, 10 of the top 20 in-demand jobs did not exist fifteen years ago.4 Social Media Manager, Site Engine Optimisation Specialist, Mobile Applications Developer, Big Data Analyst, Green Energy Engineer, Cloud Computing Specialist, Digital Marketing Specialist, Drone Operators, Natural Language Process Operators, etc. Most of these jobs have developed not from within the traditional academic systems/ research outcomes but largely due to the cross-application of ideas from widely disparate disciplines. The rigid academic compartments and academic silos that we used to know are giving way to functionalities that are geared towards solving 21st century problems. Indeed it has been opined that in another ten years, what we need to know to operate as knowledgeable/educated citizens would have radically changed.5 Parinita Gohil, Co-Founder, Learning Delight, an Indian based company, contextualises this change very well when she notes that;

The relationship between students and teachers has undergone a complete transformation ever since the advent of technology. This is because today’s student has access to a variety of sources for information, as opposed to simply learning what is being taught at school. The methodology of teaching for such curious minds, therefore, is evolving as well, and becoming more and more interactive and engaging, thanks to digital means. 6

Google Classroom is currently one of the most widely used online educational tools, with more than 40 million users and growing, where teachers, students, and parents manage class assignments, quizzes and discussions.6

 

So, what will the future of education look like?

Education soon will become highly personalised. Learning content will become (already is, actually) available on-demand, enabling students to design and build degree programmes and/or learning outcomes from a wide variety of institutions offering particular courses. Universities will be masters of content aggregation, working as intellectual talent and knowledge providers and competing with other bodies such as research and data firms. As aggregators, they will recover their investments from royalties and license fees from the content, knowledge and other intellectual property activities provided by academics and professionals that they engage. The best universities will become like the big football clubs or entertainment companies who will go all over the world identifying, investing in, and harvesting the returns from great bents. Institutions that cannot invest in content aggregation and technologies will find it harder to compete and cover their operating costs, especially in terms of tuition pricing. The application of dynamic tuition pricing to content will see to this. Those without endowments and or public funding support will struggle to survive. The emergence of the phenomenon of a “lone wolf scholar” who plies his trade in cyberspace and owes no allegiance to an established institution will grow substantially. With online campuses and courses like Udemy, Coursera, FutureLearn and EdX, scholars can teach online and earn good pay without contending with a conventional university’s institutional rigidities.8

 

Distinguished ladies and gentlemen, it is essential that we know that the Disrupted Educational System is already here. Prominent actors are: Coursera, Udemy, Khan Academy, Alison, LinkedIn Learning (formerly Lynda.com), Udacity, CodeAcademy, Iversity, SkillShare, and General Assembly are already doing all we talked about above. According to Coursera, they “envision a world where anyone, anywhere can transform their life by accessing the world’s best learning experience“9They currently have 35 million students, I82 Partner Universities and Corporations from 27 countries, offering 3,393 courses and 250 specialisations. Udemy has 30 million students taking 100,000 different courses that are 100% online. Cost ranges from $10 to $300. Alison has 13 million Learners from 195 countries, 1,000 courses from which 1.5 million students have graduated since they started in 2007, all for Free. Udacity gave us the concept of a “Nano Degree“. Their mission is, “to democratise education” through the offering of world-class higher education opportunities that are “accessible, flexible, and economical”.10 They currently have 8 million learners from 208 Countries taking over 40 courses.

 

The greatest beneficiaries are Students, parents, and the “Eduprenuers” in all these. Decreased cost of content combined with increased competition among professors and lower average ROI for universities per professor will lead to lower tuition costs and greater choice. Great professors with interdisciplinary knowledge—the great aggregators will see license and royalty fees go up as they command economies of scale in distribution. Existing institutions with large endowments and the capacity to invest in great talent will tighten their grip on the upper end of the education market. At the same time, others struggle to compete and survive. Public-Private Institutions, for-profit, and publicly traded universities will emerge as ownership models. The class of “edupreneurs” will grow and overtake existing institutions providing significantly increased personal choice for all from pre-school to post-graduate studies. 11

 

Perspectives of Security Education 

As with many aspects of our educational curriculum, the security component is badly outdated. First, it is not given the prominence that it deserves. Second, it is only in the last twenty years that security studies have emerged as a distinct academic discipline in our University curriculum from under the broad subject matter of Sociology and Criminology. Third, even with the ongoing review of the benchmark minimum academic standards being conducted by the regulatory body, the National Universities Commission. (NUC), security education is not included in the general studies courses, a rather curious omission in an age where security considerations in both the physical and cyberspace realms have become prominent. I want the distinguished members of the audience to pause a bit and reflect on simple things like description and direction. When you ask an average Nigerian to describe whom he saw or provide directions to a location, the chances are that you are often left more confused than before you asked. The fact of the matter is that we do not teach these items in school. If I ask the HOD of Sociology whether their students regularly visit police stations on excursions or if their students undertake their internships with the police, the answer will be no or not much. You will find students of primary and secondary schools going on excursions to airports, national assembly, secretariat, etc., but never to a police station. Why?

 

Several reasons account for the lapses as mentioned above. The first is the historical and legacy issues arising from our understanding of what constitutes security, its framework and architecture. For example, the legal environment that defines the structure and composition of the armed security forces. The Nigeria Police Force ranks as one of the largest globally under one command structure.12 The Inspector-General of Police is answerable only to the President. The Governor as the CSO of the State cannot direct the State Commissioner of Police (and in the same vein all the other Federal security-related agencies in the State), without prior approval from the Headquarters. This usually translates to a loss of valuable response time or no response at all to security challenges in the State. The matter is a constitutional one that must be viewed in the light of global best practice as far as policing and security provisioning are concerned. Critical to the legal environment is the issue of legislative oversight on Security matters. Security votes can go unaccounted for, and legislative or civil society oversight of security matters hardly exists.

 

The second is the relationship between security and justice. For many poor people, judicial outcomes constitute what Piccato describes as “a lottery of impunity”.13 Where there is no justice, and where people practically get away with “murder” mainly due to rule by patronage and misuse of governmental instruments of coercion to entrench political and social inclusion, some people will react by taking “laws into their hands”. St. Augustine asks and answers, “What are kingdoms without justice? They are just gangs of bandits.”14 And as Richard Engel puts it; Insurgencies are easy to make and hard to stop. Only a few ingredients need to combine to create an insurgency; like oxygen and fire, they’re very common and mix all too often. The recipe is, simply, a legitimate grievance against a state, a state that refuses to compromise, a quorum of angry people, and access to weapons.15

 

The third is the issue of a Security Ecosystem Map (SEM). How many states in Nigeria have one? Probably very few. Without a SEM of the environment, it is impossible to map security threats and deal with them as they arise. This is why formal security organs of Nigeria, more often than not, respond to security challenges as they arise. Being proactive is not a very popular consideration in operationalising security matters. It also translates to poor Intelligence gathering and sharing. Do we have any training methodology on how to develop a Security Ecosystem Map for the wider society? Without an SEM of the environment, it is challenging to map security threats and deal with them as they arise.

 

Poor use of technology to enhance security operations, especially in profiling, threat analysis, surveillance, crime scene investigation, and forensic analysis, is another factor. For example, to what extent do we apply tracking technologies in the criminal enterprise known as kidnapping for ransom? Have our security authorities ever used “dye bombs” when making ransom payments? What is being done regarding cybersecurity as it relates to crime, terror and many forms of harassment, especially on social networks? Is first level cybersecurity training provided as a given or is it subscribed as a speciality?

 

Education and Security in the Cyber Domain

Cyberspace is the notional or virtual environment where communication over computers and other networks occurs. It is the symbolic space or plane that is created on any communication infrastructure such as the Internet. The Internet is a global computer network providing various information and communication facilities, consisting of interconnected networks using standardised communication protocols. The World Wide Web (www) is a service that exists on the Internet. While the term cyber predates the Internet and the Web, it has emerged as the catchphrase for most of the activities that take place on it. You can think of a website that exists on cyberspace. When you go “online”, you are in cyberspace. In that space, you can carry out virtually any activity. In that regard, the adjective cyber can relate to over 50 different words ranging from activity, actions, phenomena, and timeline to individual and group pursuits or interests. Cybersecurity, cybercrime, cyberwar, cyberterrorism, etc., to mention just a few. 16

 

Apart from Outer space, it is the largest unregulated and uncontrolled domain made entirely by humankind in History. Another unique feature is its relative age. Although electrical and electronic forms of communication are at least over 100 years, the convergence technology that drives the cyber domain is about 60 years old. Added to its relative “youth” is the speed of its evolution. Five years is considered very old in cyberspace, while ten is ancient. Also, like all previous domains, cyber encompasses the good and the bad. In our current global and digital world, the cyber domain is crucial. It drives critical national functions such as economic development, education, commerce and financial transactions, social interactions, medical and health, government operations, national security, and defence. As a result of this, the Nigerian government in its 2014 National Cybersecurity Policy envisaged a safe, secure, vibrant, resilient and trusted community that would provide opportunities for its citizenry, safeguard its national assets and interests, promote peaceful interactions and proactive engagement in cyberspace for national prosperity.17

 

It may interest us to note that at the level of the cyber domain, which currently drives several aspects of our daily lives, the general knowledge of the domain is abysmal. Worse still is that those who make policy with regards to a domain in which over 50% of the stated population call “home”, are stark illiterates when it comes to the baseline knowledge about it. This is not peculiar to Nigeria. General Michael Hayden, former Director of the CIA, described the cybersecurity knowledge gap and the dangers it presents thus; “Rarely has something been so important and so talked about with less and less clarity and less apparent understanding. . .I have sat in very small group meetings in Washington…unable (along with my colleagues) to decide on a course of action because we lacked a clear picture of the long term legal and policy implications of any decision we might make.” 18

 

Given that innovation was critical to the growth of cyberspace, some of the earliest adopters were criminal elements. Europol’s 2020 Internet Organized Crime Threat Assessment has identified an expanding cybercriminal economy exploiting increasingly Internet-enabled lives and low levels of what is referred to as digital hygiene.19 This expansion of cybercrime has been estimated to have grown in the UK by 2016, to the point that it surpassed the financial impact of traditional crime. In his seminal book; “Future Crimes: Inside the Digital Underground and Battle for our Connected World”, Marc Goodman extensively x-rays the modern cybercrime enterprise as a full-fledged service, multi-product, highly profitable global organisation capable of taking down an individual, company or government at will. Using corporate strategies such as supply chain management, global logistics, creative financing, just-in-time manufacturing, workforce incentivising and consumer needs analysis, Cybercrime Inc is the new mafia raking in over 12 billion USD in 2015 alone.20 Companies like Innovative Marketing pioneered ransomware and Network distributed criminality as evidenced by the 2013 ATM attacks during which 45 million USD was stolen in an operation that lasted ten hours in 27 countries and 36,000 transactions. In the Darknet, marketplaces exist for the purchase of Cracking software and or services, crypto-currencies, pirated music and films, illicit drugs, weapons, documents, credit cards, assassins for hire, human trafficking, child pornography and human organs. Crime-as-a-Service as a business model that is enjoying tremendous growth with the advent of cloud services and cryptocurrencies, has flourished in cyberspace.21

 

Distinguished audience, ladies, and gentlemen, since our digital assets are as important as our physical assets, it is important to understand that cybersecurity is no longer just about protecting assets. It’s about enabling our nation to take full advantage of the vast opportunities that the ecosystem of cyberspace now offers for business, education, government, and virtually every aspect of our society. However, these opportunities can be hazarded by rapidly emerging cyber threats from hackers (hacktivists), organised crime, nation-states, and terrorists. Both businesses and government must fully understand the full spectrum of threats and system vulnerabilities and address them effectively and efficiently. From a financial and human resource perspective, the cost of doing so is huge. However, the price for not doing so is far greater. According to the CBN, the value of online transactions in Nigeria as at 2019 was 107.9 trillion naira.22 Worldwide spending on ICT according to the International Data Corporation in 2020 is 5 trillion USD.23 As provided by the Cybercrime Act, 0.005% of this amount should be used to fund Cybersecurity development. This translates to approximately 3.7 billion naira or about 100 million USD. This figure pales into insignificance compared to 1.9 billion pounds invested in cybersecurity by the UK Government in 2016 alone. As we mature in the age of cyber or digital democracy with its attendant fake, hate and trash news and the need to strike a balance between freedom and security, you will agree with me that we have arrived at exciting times.

 

Some Propositions to Consider

The extent to which security challenges affect governance in Nigeria can be seen from the wanton destruction of property and loss of lives whenever a breach in security occurs. Where public property built with taxpayers’ money is destroyed, the citizens will have to pay to rebuild them. Where private property built with hard-earned money is destroyed, it sets the individual or family back by several years. Where lives are lost, they cannot be replaced. Herein lies the nexus between education, security, governance and development. Chairman of the Convocation Lecture, Pro-Chancellor, Vice-Chancellor, PAAU, I belong to a tendency of historical studies commonly referred to as Active History. We like to proffer propositions and prognosticate outcomes using the framework of futurology studies.

 

In the light of the problems of insecurity and other ethno-political tendencies, a significant facet of the challenge for national cohesion lies in the State’s capacity to nip in the bud tendencies towards all forms of impunities by any persons or groups. Such persons and groups have taken undue advantage of the inadequate presence of government in places like our poorly manned borders and remote rural areas. Their nefarious conducts such as cross-border banditry, terrorists’ attacks, smuggling, illicit trans-border trafficking in drugs and human beings, and human organs have severely undermined the authority and legitimacy of the Nigerian nation-state. This is a fundamental and existential threat and if not progressively reversed in another three years, the country will descend to a rule by ungoverned warlords.

 

The education of citizens on security matters is virtually non-existent in Nigeria. Beyond radio jingles on “reporting suspicious persons” there is no defined programme on inculcating a culture of “secureness” amongst our people. This should be a continuous exercise at all levels of the educational systems and our formal and informal establishments. We should consider introducing a compulsory course at the general studies level that focuses on security. When we talk of STEM, do we imagine for once that the S can mean Security rather than Science? Have we bothered to make any investment in providing “Security Laboratories” in the programmes that teach security? Do we teach the PEACE Framework and Evidence-Based Threat Analysis and Mitigation Techniques? Is the model of creative problem-solving (CPS), which has been rated very highly by security education experts, part of our security education training? To answer this question, I foresee the emergence of an International Centre for Security Education in one of the Universities in Kogi State that will lead Nigeria in new thinking on education and security.

 

Auditing of the security framework and the development of a security ecosystem map will help determine whether the need to hire a professional security company to complement the activities of the traditional agencies will arise. The role of private Security providers is a point to note. Given as we mentioned earlier, the inability of formal state organs to provide security, the number of private providers have snow-balled in recent times. This phenomenon is not unique to Nigeria. In the United States of America, official private security providers out-number public ones by 3:1. In South Africa, the factor is 4:1. We do not have the statistics for Nigeria, but if the information credited to the Civil Defence Corp is to be believed, the factor may be as high as 2:1. Outstanding security companies are not cheap but will provide services that formal providers cannot.

 

The cost of end-to-end security operations is expensive. Security funding is usually far below the budget line in the vicious competition for funds to pay salaries and pensions to build and maintain critical infrastructure. This is itself a significant threat. The inability to pay for competent security personnel and provide requisite equipment and training leaves us under-protected. This cost can be supplemented through creative funding of security services. Some states are beginning to charge a “security levy” as part of the revenue profile of the State. This helps create a reserve fund used to provide equipment and training for the security agencies.

 

The adoption of technology solutions for security management will go a long way in helping to meet security challenges. The use of biometric identity management systems, attendance management systems, closed-circuit cameras, and “mystery shopper” devices provide a sense of “big brother is watching you”. It also helps to reduce the propensity for deviant and criminal behaviour. Technology-driven campus, public spaces, and private establishments security will grow exponentially in the next five years. So will technology-driven farm security. Developments and trends in technology and innovation in agriculture, especially in terms of new ways of feeding farm animals, using a ‘total mixed ration’ to reduce labour costs, increase animal health and give farmers greater flexibility with feed ingredients. Fodder and other grasses are big businesses that several parts of Nigeria can begin to develop seriously. The late Professor Emmanuel Agishi and his colleagues at Ahmadu Bello University in the late 1980s developed Signal Grass and Verano Stylo as fodder. They successfully demonstrated how they could manage the relationship between farmers and herders. Investments in livestock genetic technologies and the use of radio frequency identification (EID) for range management using the award-winning Botswana model will lead to better management of farmers and herders’ relationships. Technology-based “Early Warning Systems” in notable flashpoints will also help mitigate reactionary responses to attacks when they do happen.

 

Lastly, I can only lend our voices to what many others have suggested in the past, that the Nigerian State must deal with the twin evils of youth unemployment and underemployment, and corruption. The State must be seen as willing and able to instil a sense of justice to the underlying issues that drive people to take up arms against each other and/or the State. Like St. Augustine warns, the State itself may be seen as the bandit. The nexus between ancestral owners of lands/migrants/settlers has to be couched in a constitutional legal framework to address the perspectives of each group. Addressing such questions as; Who are the combatants; who trains and arms then? Who provides logistic support for them? Who provides security and judicial cover for them? As you may bear me witness, how many persons have been successfully prosecuted in this country in crimes involving communal crisis, kidnapping and banditry? Very few compared to the volume of crimes committed. Are hate crimes part of our criminal jurisprudence? No! Social media-promoted hate crimes, and profiling of persons based on ethnicity, gender and religion must be comprehensively addressed. It will continue to grow and provide accelerants for violence in our communities if not.

 

Conclusion 

Throughout the history of humankind, differences over political and economic opportunities, ethnicity and religion have often degenerated into conflict situations. It stems from feelings of injustice, cultural superiority, intolerance, teachings and principles inherent in tenets of the religion, and political/economic interests. Peoples who have suffered tremendous neglect in opportunities that ordinarily would have accrued to them from Federal and State governments are quick to view government not as partners in progress but as agents of oppression. Democratic governance depends on the ability of the State to extend the rule of law and essential protection to excluded and marginalised groups. Thus, protecting lives and property is a central pillar on which governance rests and performance is measured. Without relative peace and security, economic and social growth and development of society cannot proceed. Throughout history, when governments have been unable to provide security, that vacuum is filled by various individual and group actions. In some cases, state authorities have used structured deprivation, ethnicity and religion as frameworks for engagement. Inter-group and intra-group clashes have been promoted to ensure that certain regions remain disunited. The ongoing displacement of populations from their traditional homelands in parts of the Niger and Benue River basins with loss of actual and potential economic opportunities are examples of this.

 

Given the social dynamism in Nigeria and the unpredictable nature of national and global security trends, in particular, one needs a good mixture of knowledge and skills, technology, funding, and luck to mitigate the challenges we face daily in Nigeria. Madame VC, as the Chief Security Officer of PAAU, you need to be proactive, resourceful and creative to be on top of the campus security situation. The Local Government Chairman will do the same at that level, and your visitor will do the same at the State. That concentric ring of actions provides a firm lid on security challenges.

 

Finally, I agree with President Goodluck Jonathan, who said,

…if we do not spend billions educating our youths today, we will spend it fighting insecurity tomorrow. And you do not have to spend on education just because of insecurity. It is also the prudent thing to do. Nigeria, or any African nation for that matter, can never become wealthy by selling more minerals or raw materials such as oil. Our wealth as a nation is between the ears of our people.24

 

I rest my case.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

End Notes

  1. see Heiner Hänggi, Theodor H. Winkler 
D, Challenges of Security Sector Governance, CAF & LIT Verlag 2004
  2. Nicol Ball and Kayode Fayemi et.al, Security Sector Governance in Africa- A Handbook, pdfhttps://gsdrc.org/docs/open/gfn-ssr securitysectorgovernanceinafrica-ahandbook.pdf
  3. Security Sector Governance in Africa
  4. Deloitte (2014) Industry 4.0 – Challenges and solutions for the digital transformation and use of exponential technologies -http://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/ch/Documents/manufacturing/chen-manufacturing-industry-4-0-24102014.pdf. Also see Foresight (2013) The Future of Manufacturing: A new era of opportunity and challenge for the UK Project Report. The Government Office for Science, London. Also see, Green, A; Hogarth, T; Kispeter, E; Owen, D (2016) The Future of productivity in manufacturing. Strategic Labour Market Intelligence Report. Institute for Employment Research, University of Warwick: https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/ier/research/strategic_lmi/ier_2016_manufacturing_sector_productivity_report.pdf. World Economic Forum 2018 Report on the Future of Jobs.
  5. The subject matter of Disruption of Education is well summarized in the edited volume by Deborah Lupton,Inger Mewburnand Pat Thomson (eds.),The Digital Academic: Critical Perspectives on Digital Technologies in Higher Education, 2018.
  6. Parinita Gohil, “Digital Education-The Future of Learning.” (https://www.entrepreneur.com/author/parinita-gohil).
  7. classroom.google.com
  8. Ochefu, The ‘Sapper’ as a Polymath: Rethinking aspects of Security Education in Institutions of Higher Learning in Nigeria. Nigeria Army Resource Centre, 2021
  9. https://about.coursera.org/press/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/2021-Coursera-Impact-Report.pdf
  10. https://www.udacity.com/us
  11. The Institute for the Future,Future Work Skills 2020, Also see, Jenny Andersson, The Future of the World: Futurology, Futurists, and the Struggle for the Post Cold War Imagination, OUP Oxford, 2018
  12. Nigeria Police Force, see https://atipsom.com/npf/
  13. Piccato, A History of Infamy: Crime, Truth and Justice in Mexico, University of California Press, 2017
  14. Augustine of Hippo, City of God
  15. Richard Engels,https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/analysis-egypt-has-all-ingredients-insurgency-flna6c10878895
  16. Ochefu, “In God We Trust. All Others We Monitor”: Cogitations of Cyberspace and Its National Security Implications. Lecture to Defence Headquarters, Abuja, 2017
  17. National Cyber Security Policy; see, https://technologytimes.ng/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/NATIONAL-CYBERSECURITY-POLICY-AND-STRATEGY-2021_E-COPY_.pdf
  18. https://news.wttw.com/sites/default/files/article/file-attachments/Cybersecurity%20and%20Cyberwar-Introduction.pdf
  19. Europol Internet Organised Crime Threat Assessment, 2020; https://www.europol.europa.eu/cms/sites/default/files/documents/internet_organised_crime_threat_assessment_iocta_2020.pdf
  20. Marc Goodman, Future Crimes: Inside the Digital Underground and the Battle for Our Connected World, Random House,2015
  21. Future Crimes
  22. Central Bank of Nigeria Annual Reports
  23. https://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=US48459721

 

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