A two-day conference to galvanize community response to growing insecurity in Northern Nigeria has opened in Kaduna on Monday.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the Conference was put together by Arewa Research and Development Project (ARDP) in collaboration with Sir Ahmadu Bello Foundation.
Dr Usman Bugaje, ARDP Coordinator, said the conference was envisioned to be solution driven and focus on what communities should do to protect themselves and salvage what can be salvaged.
According to him, the response of security agencies to the myriads of security challenges in the region “is not translating into positive results”.
“It became necessary therefore to re-examine what strategies government is using and more importantly to explore the need for communities to take up the challenge so that together we salvage the country.”
According to him, the conference has brought experts from all the security agencies to brainstorm and come up with solutions to end the challenges.
“We therefore envisage sydicates composing of experienced people in security logistic and inteligence to do a quick need assessment and come up with posible solutions.”
Bugaje said ARDP and its partner decided on the conference, because as citizens, they have the right to say when government in not delivering.
“We want to underscore the significance of citizens participation in salvaging this country, we want everybody to know that, as citizens we have every role to play and we want to work with government to see how things can be improved.”
Hajiya Saudatu Sani, who spoke at the event, called for joint efforts in addressing the security issues in the region.
She expressed the hope that the Conference would offer good advise to the government and communities on how best to ensure peace in the North.
NAN reports that seven sydicate will explore various security issues in the region including banditary, kidnapping, Armed Robbery, Boko Haram Insurgency, Farmer/Herder Conflict, Ethno Religious Conflict among others. (NAN)
