Former Minister of External Affairs, Ambassador Ibrahim Gambari, has said Nigeria must revisit the 2014 National Conference report to effectively checkmate the spate of killings and security challenges across the country.
The former minister made this suggestions yesterday in Abuja during a public lecture, titled “Development Resolution: Overcoming Global Conflicts and their Local Interactions,” organised by Ubuntu Centre for African Peace building in collaboration with West African Network for Peace building, WANEP, and Savannah Centre for Diplomacy, Democracy and Development, SCDDD.
He said: “There is lack of confidence in the current arrangement; the evidence is that people are being killed every day. There were recommendations at the 2014 National Conference. We better go and look at it and see how we can have a structure that will take up to the local, the state and to the national police that will work together and not one at the expense of the other.”
Gambari argued that localisation of the security apparatus was paramount, stressing that unless Nigeria localised its security apparatus and architecture, security challenges would continue to pose a threat.
While contending that that the cooperation of local communities would go a long in tackling extremism, he said “You need intelligence and to get it, you need to become friends and partners of the local community, but when there are human rights violations, you are afraid of the security; you can’t get that kind of cooperation.
“Even if you have peace, you can’t eat peace. Peace is a necessary condition but not a sufficient condition for development, because you must have a means of livelihood.
Delivering the lecture, Mr. Marek Hrubec, Director, Centre of Global Studies, Institute of Philosophy, Czech Academy of Sciences, spoke extensively on the four eras of independence and called on Africa to develop own-grown model to tackle its challenges.
Hrubec informed that the Chinese model was attractive because it transformed infrastructure and lifted millions out of poverty, stressing that Africa needed its own model governed by its own experiences, goals and objectives.
