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By Pius Dukor
The Civil Society Legislative Advocacy (CISLAC) has tasked security agencies and community leaders to adapt early warning and early response to combat security challenges.
CISLAC, with support from Open Society Foundation (OSF-Africa), made the remark at a one-day event on ‘Community Security Architecture Dialogue on Early Warning and Early Response’ held in Port Harcourt, the Rivers State capital.
In his welcome remarks, the executive director of CISLAC, Auwal Ibrahim Musa, explained that conflict sensitivity is important to the security architecture in our local communities, hence the need for the dialogue.
Represented at the event by Jimoh Abubakar, CISLAC’s executive director maintained that community people should report early signals before the full crisis situation develops, so as to minimise or eradicate loss of lives and properties. He said community people should report signals of conflict rather than the incident itself, noting that intelligence gathering is a panacea for peace.
He further explained that community training on dialogue will help reduce banditry, kidnapping and killing by either cultists or bandits.
Earlier, the resource person, Comrade Sebastian Kpalap, in his presentation, titled ‘Human Security Threat in Nigeria’s South- South,’ enumerated key issues that can generate security threats within the community in the South South region of Nigeria.
Some of the identified issues include sea piracy, cultism, illegal bunkering, drug abuse, environmental pollution, bad governance, electoral violence and youth unemployment among others.
In an interview with journalists, some of the participants identified land grabbing and chieftaincy crisis as part of the cases that can lead to altercation within community, while calling on government to do the needful and curb the sad situation experienced by some communities in the Niger Delta.
It was observed that inter-agency rivalry and resource struggle among the security agencies hamper collective and coordinated response to reported threats signals.
It was also observed that the Ledor community in Tai Local Government Area of Rivers State recorded some casualties due to a case of land grabbing where it was alleged that youths from neighbouring local government area, Oyigbo, attacked famers in Ledor community.
Also, within the week, some communities in Etche LGA staged a peaceful protest to Government House Port Harcourt due to attack by suspected hoodlums in relation to land grabbing in the area.
Participants at the workshop tasked the different security agencies to work and collaborate together for effective policing of the environment. They frowned at the rate of vigilantes springing up, noting that these vigilantes are abusing the right of citizens since they are not recognised by the Constitution to handle criminal cases.
The participants recommended among others the creation of community spies with proper integration and intelligence gathering for coordinated response, so as to reduce crisis and insecurity. Also, formidable group building in early warning process, to engender strong voice in reporting signals and eliciting timely response.
