April 17, 2018

Prof. Ibrahim Gambari, a former Minister of External Affairs, has advised the Federal Government to devote more resources to tackling non-military threats to the security of the country.

Gambari, a one-time UN Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Darfur, made the call at the Fourth Biennial National Conference of the Centre for Ilorin Studies (CILS), University of Ilorin on Tuesday.

He described such threats as poverty, political exclusion, marginalisation, and youths unemployment.

According to him, in our approach to addressing the challenges of security, we tend to address only one aspect, the military and physical threat to security.

“That is why we deploy the security forces all over Nigeria doing what is essentially community policing duties that traditional rulers and authorities ought to be addressing,” he said.

Gambari’s paper was titled, “Human Security and the Survival of Cultural Heritage of Ilorin Emirate and its Environs”.

The diplomat said it had become imperative for the government to look at insecurity in the land from a multi-dimensional perspective.

He said the future remained bleak unless concerted efforts were made to urgently tackle the challenge of human capital development confronting the country.

Gambari, who is also the Chancellor of the Kwara University, Malete, said “a country can be physically secured but the people will be totally and completely insecure”.

He said that “there is a difference between physical security and human security”.

He noted that about 104 years ago, the British colonial masters created Nigeria “for their own purposes not for ours”.

“Now, we have to make the Nigeria that we want, the Nigeria of our dreams, so that it is not just a mere geographic expression but the community of peoples sharing broadly, common values and aspirations and working to produce a united, peaceful, prosperous and just nation,” he said.

He pointed out that nations like Indonesia, Malaysia, South Korea, and Taiwan that were at par with Nigeria at independence had overtaken the country.

Gambari advocated structural, policy and attitudinal changes in order to move the country forward.

He said the country should spend more money on preventive measures.

He also advised on addressing the vulnerability factors such as poverty, weak institutions of governance, political exclusion of key segments of the population, ethnic/religious tension, economic marginalisation and above all youths unemployment.

“When you have massive youth unemployment, you are creating a pool from which bad people will go and pick people to go and do very bad things,” he said.

Similarly, the Lead Paper Presenter at the Conference, Prof. Olutayo Adesina, the Director of the Centre for General Studies, University of Ibadan, decried the eroding of traditional values and culture among young Nigerians.

According to Adesina, this development, is responsible for the pervading societal ills.

Adesina pointed out that the problem was that “we don’t value what we have any longer”.