By Seriki Adinoyi in Jos
The National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies (NIPSS) has identified community policing and decentralisation of security framework as the solution to internal security crises bedevilling Nigeria, noting with a framework where the community is involved, the job of internal security would become easier.
Addressing press conference on Friday ahead of the Graduation Ceremony of the Senior Executive Course (SEC) 40 of the institute, the Acting Director General of NIPSS, Mr. Jonathan Juma observed that, “when the various segments are allowed to participate in intelligence gathering, interact with security agencies so that they are able to identify problem areas and spots with a view to getting the security agents involved.
“We appreciate the fact that communities have been challenged by a number of crisis situations. The idea is how to bring in the communities to be part of the solutions.”
He said the 66 participants of the SEC 40 had in the past 10 months brainstormed on the theme: ‘Strengthening Internal Security Framework and Community Policing in Nigeria: Models, Policy Options and Strategies’, and had come up with the report that was recently submitted to the President Muhammadu Buhari. “We hope that, if the report submitted to Mr. President is implemented, security issues will be addressed.”
Jume, however, lamented that the institute was under-funded and identified it as a major challenge it was confronted with at the moment, but added that the institute tried to source for funds from other areas to augment funds from government.
He said, “Mr. President has directed that more funds be made available to the institute; we are at the moment grossly under-funded. We require money to be able to discharge our mandate; if we have funds, we would do a lot of consultations, conduct researches
“We also hope that if we are well funded we expand the Senior Executive Course and other courses we run. To do this, we require additional chalets and indicate rooms; and more research fellows, and all these can only come by funding.
“We are not totally dependent on government; we are also looking inwards, we look at internally generated revenue to augment what we get from government. Hopefully if all things work well, we will increase the number of participants that come in for the Senior Executive Course.”
