Babagana Monguno, national security adviser (NSA), says the
government cannot afford to keep extending the phasing out of the Almajiri
system of education in Nigeria.
Speaking at the launch of the revised national security
strategy for 2019 on Wednesday, Monguno said if the system is allowed to
persist, “it will come back to bite us big time”.
The national security strategy was launched in 2014 and it
is reviewed every five years.
In June, Monguno said the federal government was considering
proscribing the system to ensure that no child is deprived of basic education.
“The issue of illiteracy is directly linked to the issue of
children not going to school, this Almajiri phenomenon which we have been
talking about, we cannot continue to push it under the carpet because what?
Eventually, it will come back to bite us in the butt big time, we need to deal
with this issue and it is the responsibility of all of us to try and take care
of this issue without any inhibition,” the NSA said.
He also said insecurity in the country is tied to
international influence, adding that both internal and external factors have
combined to result in “a complex constellation of threat and risk to all of
us”.
He said the revised strategy is designed to tackle the root
causes of insecurity, education and healthcare challenges.
“The issue of insurgency in the northeast is directly linked
to the issue of terrorism in the Sahel which is an increasingly volatile
neighbourhood and the situation is also derived from what is happening in Libya
which in turn is affected by the lack of security Syria which derived its own
situation ultimately from Iraq,” he said.
“Now when we look at the issue of farmers and pastoralists
perpetual conflict, it is also linked to the influx of armed groups and the
proliferation of small arms and light weapons across porous borders. In our own
case, we are talking of some 4,040 kilometers of land borders. Again, when you
look at the upsurge in armed banditry, it is part of the sphere of
transnational organised crime which is affecting us. And looking at the Niger
delta situation, basically, the activities of criminal gangs in the Niger Delta
are equally linked to pipeline vandalism, oil theft, piracy and sea robbery in
the Gulf of Guinea.
“Now, what the strategy does is to look at our national
security objectives and align these objectives with this administration’s goals
in fighting corruption, giving access to improved education, taking care of the
healthcare problems as well as increased productivity in the agriculture
sector. But rooted in the strategy are issues that may not be visible to the
necked eyes, but issues that have tended to be malignant to cause a lot of
greater problems to this society.
“Fundamentally, if we are going to take care of these
problems, we need to try and safeguard the fast-growing young population of
Nigeria and guess what? We need to look at issues of poverty eradication and
illiteracy. I will tell you one thing.
The administration of President Muhammadu Buhari in its pursuit for greater and
enhanced security will not allow itself to be blackmailed or handcuffed by the
disarming philosophy of compliance with certain aspects that are socio-cultural
in nature which people tend to be adverse to dealing. We must grab the bull by
the horn and deal with these issues.”
Speaking further on the revised strategy, Monguno said a
committee of experts was constituted and tasked with the duty of revising the
2014 edition so as to tackle evolving trends of security threats.
According to him, the revised strategy places emphasis on
human security as against the existing “state-centric orientation”.
“It addresses the current threats faced by the Nigerian
nation as well as those threats that are anticipated to emerge in the near
future. We have also proffered appropriate strategy to address these threats
which demand a whole of government approach in combination with a whole of
nation to achieve a whole of societal approach in dealing with these
challenges,” he said.
“The core philosophy of this strategy is human security.
This is a shift from the state-centric orientation we have been used to, to a
new paradigm in which the safety and wellbeing of the individual citizens are
the primary bases for all national security measures. And this is what I call
the Muhammadu Buhari approach to National Security.”
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