A criminologist, Prof. Kayode Adedeji, yesterday asked President Muhammadu Buhari, state governors and local government chairmen to rescue the country from what he described as the “grip of destructive forces of criminality”.
This is just as the Nigerian Society for Criminology, called for knowledge based intervention and synergy among all levels of government to nip security challenges in the bud.
Adedeji gave the charge in his remarks, in a webinar organised by the Nigeria Society for Criminology, entitled, “Criminology and contemporary security challenges in
Nigeria” during which papers on different aspects of crime, social problems and security management were presented by Prof. Adeyinka Aderinto, Prof. Emmanuel Gyong, Dr. Ezeji Chiji, and Dr. Phillip Ndubueze, among others.
He said government seems unable to tackle the problems of insecurity partly due to inadequacy of knowledge or due to the fire brigade approach usually employed in addressing issues in Nigeria, urging members of the society to make findings of their researches available to policy actors as their contribution towards ending the spate of insecurity in the country.
Aderinto in his paper titled, “Historical and
Contemporary overview of security challenges in Nigeria”, traced the origin of contemporary insecurity to trust gap, injustice which birthed ethnic agitations and kidnapping in the Niger-Delta region.
According to him, “Despite years of independence, insecurity is still Nigeria’s biggest challenge and is fast becoming Nigeria’s identity. Although the origin of security challenges in the country cannot be clearly ascertained , it is researched to have started after the civil war….the 1966 coup and the resultant civil war. The distrust that emanated from these experiences provides strong currents driving insecurity today and many ethnic agitations have arisen many decades after the war. This is further worsened by the downturn in the economic fortunes of the country following the end of oil boom in the 1980s”.
He then charged government to deal with the root causes of insecurity to end the present social problem which he argued is costing the diversion of money ideally meant for developmental purposes to provide security.
Aderinto who noted that crimes are local added that” government alone cannot surmount the problem because all problems are local. A synergy of all levels of government will do a lot to end the problem”
Gyong, Chiji and Ndubueze on their parts, emphasised the need for intelligence led policing, good governance founded on justice , accountability and due process, and the use of technology in curbing modern security threats.
A renowned criminologist, Prof. Etannibi Alemika, had earlier stated that criminological knowledge and researches are needed more than ever before to assist the country in navigating the contemporary security challenges, adding that evidence based scientific interventions will be useful in formulating the right security policies.
