Insecurity: Army, other security agencies told to synergise

Participants at a two-day summit have called for closer cooperation between the Nigerian Army and other security agencies for them to be integrated into peacebuilding efforts across the country.

This is contained in a communiqué issued at the end of a two-day summit organised in Abuja on Wednesday.

File: Army

The communique noted that the synergy would enable the security agencies effectively tackle terrorism, insurgency and electoral violence in Nigeria.

The summit was organised by the African Union Development Agency – New Partnership for African Development (AUDA-NEPAD) in collaboration with Nigerian Army Resource Centre.

The theme of the summit is “Terrorism, Insurgency and Incidence of Electoral Violence in Nigeria: Role of Security Agencies “.

“The Nigerian Army and other security agencies should continue to do their best to keep the citizens safe. Inter-agency rivalry should be discouraged.

“Research on the root causes of insurgency, farmer/herder crisis, etc should be enhanced through funding and there should be effective interface between academics and practitioners,” it said.

To further tackle insecurity challenge, the communique said that coordination of all the soft approaches should he effectively enhanced.

The communique noted that there should be a bottom up approach to the conceptualisation and implementation of the approaches.

“Indigenous knowledge should be deployed to solve local problems,” it said.

The participants futher said that electoral Institute should work with other relevant research institutes for the mitigation of election violence.

According to them, government should engender peace within the country in view of the fact that it had been instrumental to same in other climes. ”Peace education and conflict prevention mechanisms should be accentuated, while formal and informal education should have an ethical element embedded,” the communique said.

The participants said that politics should be made less attractive to discourage vote buying and selling so that only those ready to serve would present themselves.

”The cost of governance needs to be pruned down and sanctions should be prescribed for vote buying and selling. “The Electoral Law should be reviewed; internal party democracy entrenched and INEC should be unbundled.

“The  electoral process should be transparent and offenders should be apprehended, named, shamed and appropriately punished,” it added.

Participants at the summit include the Secretary to the Government of the Federation; Security Agencies; Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC); Chief of Army Staff; AUDA-NEPAD officials, members of Academia among others.