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Our Take: It is no longer news that Nigeria is fraught with insecurity, thanks to the growing unemployment rate among young people. Other factors include lack of adequate knowledge, poor, misdirected, or incorrect policies, and corruption. While this is a trying time for the country, what is important is identifying and addressing insecurity challenges from the root to avoid further damage.
Introduction
Every nation faces challenges. It is therefore not only a Nigerian thing. What is important is that this challenges are identified and tackled on time to prevent grave damages and forestall future occurrences, after all this is why men surrendered their sovereignty to be under a government. The social contract must be followed. It is obvious to all and sundry that the issue of insecurity in Nigeria is on the increase, this is owing foundationally to the rising number of youths unemployment. Other reasons would be lack of proper education, bad, misplaced or wrong policies, corruption etc. For Thomas Hobbes, the life of man in the state of nature is solitary, harsh, wicked and brutish, this is why social contract was important, so it follows that the mechanism put in place to tame and control the animalistic tendencies of man against man must be employed to its full potential to serve its contractual purpose, hence, security for all members of society. In this essay we shall discuss the causes as well as recommend possible solutions to the problem of insecurity in Nigeria.
Causes of Insecurity in Nigeria
Insecurity, this simply means the lack of security. It also mean the breach of security and peace whether it be caused by struggle for economic scarcity of resources, religious difference, politics, ethnicity or civil conflict that leads to the destruction of lives and properties. That is, the lack of protective assurance by citizens of their leaders or government. Insecurity can mean, the fear that you can be attacked by enemies, thieves or intruders as a result of lack of security. The insecurity of lives and properties of Nigerians has been on the increase owing to the very recent issues of incessant attacks and banditry activities. Armed robbers, kidnappers, bandits, insurgents are holding most parts of the country to ransom. At the foundation of these problems lie the issue of Ethnicity, Religion, Education, Security, Employment, Corruption, Bad governance, porous border, injustice and inequalities, struggles for resources, terrorism and misrepresentation.
Corruption stands as the chief cause of insecurity in Nigeria. Because, continually, people have continued to be complacent in their jobs, they continue to compromise on their duties and even the security outfits have become so involved in crime that they can no longer curb crime. When bribes are taken from people to allow crime to happen, when security will not be at their duty post, when leaders will not get their priorities right, when policies that would guaranty our security are not implemented, when we are churning out more graduates without jobs.
You also have weak security architecture where you have issues of inadequate personnel, poor welfare of security personnel, inadequate funding, and lack of modern equipment.
The issue of Bad Leadership is also at the root of the problem of insecurity. Political leadership, religious leadership, security leaderships, civic group leadership, leadership at all levels highly accounts for why people do not get enough orientation and education to help them know better than causing and posing security threat to their nation.
And when a people have representatives who are in positions of power for self-serving reasons, it becomes hard to represent the people who had sent them forward. Timely escalation of the security concerns of your constituents impact greatly on curbing a present security situation and future occurrence.
Unemployment is another serious cause of insecurity in the Nigerian state. Like Koffi Annan once commented, youths can be an amazing drivers of a country or continents’ development if empowered and they can also be dangerous if left on society’s margins. You can’t have huge numbers of unemployed young people and not expect security challenges, especially with the very bad economic status of the times. It is sad that our factories are still not revived owing to the bad decisions by government and the very unrepentant activities of the criminally in this country. At a point, we kept on importing everything, we don’t produce anything, and we do not even refine our crude oil. How then do we hope to create employment, or boost our economy and increase GDP as well as per capital income? This is directly connected to poverty, when you have a population of poor people, you would have a serious security problem in your hands.
Recommendations (Solutions)
The possible and viable solution is to have men and women who are votary of integrity leading the charge in our public office. Let human beings who have distinguished themselves in service take charge of public office. It must not remain business as usual where you find a mediocre in position of power. People who cannot control their selfish appetites superintending over men, their resources and future? This accounts for the disastrous affairs in political leadership in the country. To be secured, we must revamp our leadership recruitment criteria and stick to them religiously and honestly.
We must interrogate to see the type of education that we are giving to our younger generation. Is it one that guarantees our safety tomorrow or one that will pull us deeper into insecurity? These are issues that we must interrogate critically.
We must solve unemployment, this is critical to ensuring a safe society with a progressive and productive individuals working hard to make the country great. Let us return patriotism, and yes, the ministry of education is doing well by reintroducing History as subject into the curriculum because it is important to learn from very early on that people sacrificed their lives to keep this country together and afloat, we must as a matter of duty reciprocate by working to make her greater. Our national pledge should be abide by to its full flavour.
I will end this essay by quoting the great Ghanian diplomat, the 7th United Nation’s Secretary General, and the Co-recipient of the 2001 Noble Peace Prize, Koffi Annan, “Young people should be at the forefront of global change and innovation. Empowered, they can be key agents for development and peace. If, however, they are left on society’s margins, all of us will be impoverished. Let us ensure that all young people have every opportunity to participate fully in the lives of their society”
Recommendation(s):
• We must reform our leadership recruiting criteria and adhere to the democratic process to ensure the election of credible leaders into leadership positions.
• The quality of education made accessible to the Nigerian youth, and children must the reevaluated to ensure it meets current global standards.
• Unemployment rate must be reduced, this is essential for creating a safe society with progressive and industrious people working hard to make the country great.
About the Author(s): Yahaya Adams Shuaibu UniAbuja. M.A Phil. A.B.U Zaria. He can be reached via email at ajeacheadams@gmail.com
Source: Anlele Channel
