By TOM CHIAHEMEN, Abuja –
Giving a constitutional role for the traditional institution, at least at the local level, has been identified as the solution the the present security and socio-economic decadence in the country.
The Olumobi of Imobi-Ijesa, His Royal Highness, Dr. Tayo Haastrup, made the suggestion in a presentation at a RoundTable on “Asymmetrical National Security Challenges, the Army and National Development,” which began in Abuja on Monday.
The two-day event has been organised by the Nigerian Army Resource Centre (NARC) Abuja in collaboration with the Development Specs Academy (DSA) and its strategic partners including the Nigerian Institute of Public relations (NIPR), the Nigerian Union of Journalists (NUJ), the Voice of Nigeria (VON), the News agency of Nigerian (NAN), the Institute for Strategic Development Communication (ISDEVCOM), Nnamdi Azikiwe Business School, and the National Drug law enforcement Agency (NDLEA), the Institute for Peace, Security and Development Studies (IPSDS).
Speaking on “Media, Public Relations and Stakeholder Engagement as Tools for National Interest Communication,” Dr Haastrup, who is also a public communication and policy professional, believed that such a constitutional role would make the traditional institution the watch-dog of the third tier of government, thus making it more virile and accountable.
“Let’s retrace our steps, traditional fathers, leaders should be able to account for their subjects and activities. If we refuse to do this, definitely, this monster called insecurity will consume all of us,” he declared.
Outlining complimentary and specific roles of the traditional rulers in security governance and sustainable economic development, Oba Haastrup suggested that all leaders in every district should watch out for strangers that enter into their community, stressing the need to bring back “those days when strangers were being welcomed with great fanfare to all heads in the community.”
While calling on the government to sanction corrupt traditional leaders who indulge in banditry by suspending or dethroning them, Haastrup said there should be a stop to ritualists, kidnappers and all sorts getting blood money and giving it to the traditional leaders for chieftaincy titles and praise.
On his part, a former Executive Secretary , Nigerian Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI), Mr.Waziri Adio, advised the military to proactively devise how to build and sustain greater synergy with the media not only to win the hearts and minds of citizens but to make our country more secure.
In his presentation, “Greater Media-Military Synergy,” Adio maintained that to build and deepen relationship, trust and understanding, someone has to take the lead, which he said should be the military, and that the military should invest time and resources in it and must be deliberate and strategic.
Emphasising the need for clarity on why the Media/Military relationship is needed, Adio said the military should see the Media as a bridge (between the military, their authorisers and the public), adding that by itself, media was a critical constituency for success.
He highlighted the things to note in the Media/Military relationship, including the Need for “an Engagement Plan, a Strategy (what do you need, from whom, when and how?); Need to understand the lay of the (media)land: ecosystem and its configuration and; Need to understand them: who are they, how are they wired, and how do they make decisions?”
Others are: “Need to broaden the field of engagement: going beyond correspondents to decision-makers: publishers/owners, editors, columnists, anchors…; Need to consistently nurture the relationship: Noah’s analogy. Preparation. Briefings. Consultations; Need to be proactive in shaping narrative: Banex example and; Need to know the limits: they can’t always do your bidding (most that can get sometimes is to reflect your own side or downplay).”
Earlier, while presenting the thematization of the RoundTable, the Executive Director of Development Specs Academy, Abuja, Prof. Okey Ikechukwu, declared that there was nothing mysterious about the causes of insecurity in Nigeria today, pointing out that the major culprits in this regard were: “Out-of-Touch elite (not just political) leadership; Poverty and unemployment; Collapse of education; Poor national planning; Episodic and Regime Development plans; Personalization of national resources; and Religious bigotry.”
He emphasised that unless the citizenry fully understands core national security issues, including especially the roles and responsibility of the key actors in the activity chain, there would always be dysfunctionalities in the national security relationship chain. including the civilian population.
“This is a Critical Success Factor for intelligence gathering at community and other levels. Once this role is observed in the breach, with some communities and community leaders even nurturing, and facilitating, the very security threat the army is trying to deal with, the problems will only fester and get worse,” he said.
According to Prof Ikechukwu, “as it stands today, the Nigerian Army is the public face of the war against banditry and insecurity. It has also become the people’s scapegoat, or “Whipping Boy” for everything wrong with the safety of lives and property in Nigeria today. This cannot be right.”
He explained that the objectives of the RoundTable was to bring out some overlooked aspects of the security challenges facing the nation, and offer specific and implementable, solutions to them.
“They include the wrong attitudes of the civil populace towards the military and security agencies, conspiracy with embedded targets in communities, refusal to support security operations with local intelligence, the targeting of military personnel for hostile civilian attention, deliberate misrepresentation of the activities and achievements of the Nigerian Army through fake news, misinformation and disinformation, among others,” he said.
The idea, according to him, was to help create a groundswell of that aspect of public communication that is usually best described as National Interest Communication without Propaganda (NIC–P).
“Because this is a people’s RoundTable for believable conversation, based on Chartham House Rules, everyone here is free to speak frankly, and objectively, without fear of being persecuted, persecuted, or misrepresented. We shall be guided here by the twin elements of non-partisan interventions and professionalism in public communication, while promoting public understanding of the roles, and achievements, of the nation’s military and security agencies, especially the Nigerian Army.
“We now have the task of fashioning out simple and implementable solutions requires us to go back to the basic elements of personal, community and environmental security that we have since abandoned. We now live with the wrong idea that it is purely the job of the military, and the security agencies, to secure us; while we just sit down and do nothing but watch them doing their job of securing us. This is absurd. Communities that do not bother to report the presence of strangers, suspicious characters, or even suspicious activities, to Institutions of State that exist to protect them only further endanger themselves and complicate our national security challenges,” he said.
While stressing the need to use “History to Ward Off Hysteria,” Prof Ikechukwu said, “as this RoundTable is inviting us to approach national security issues with a proper sense of history, it is also saying that the only way to get rid of the hysteria that has taken over the land, wherein the citizen’s duty in the national security ecosystem is deemed not to exist, is for everyone to identify, understand and carry out his role in the national security ecosystem.’
According to him, “the hysteria has been partly fanned by retreats, conferences and summits, which often offer mostly descriptive, and sometimes purely “lamentational”, submissions. We all know that detailed descriptions of the problems and their negative impact on our lives, along with generalized recommendations devoid of clear implementation strategies, will not get us out of the woods. We must go beyond complaining and blaming the military, security agencies and, especially, the Nigerian Army and play our respective roles.”
He declared that the solutions to Nigeria’s current national security problems do not lie in the declaration of a State of emergency on national security, saying, “the verbal declaration of a state of emergency will not make uncooperative communities to suddenly start plying the military and security agencies with the local intelligence they have been withholding for a long time now. It will not improve the availability of arms and ammunition.”
He maintained that the declaration of a state of emergency would not dramatically raise the morale of officers and soldiers who are overstretched, and that neither would it remove the fact that the job of our men in uniform is further complicated by the missteps of a civilian ruling elite that has created a massive pool of impoverished, unemployed, underemployed and unemployable youths with the wrong social skills.
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