Insecurity: Legal Luminary Calls For Equipment Of Security Agents/Adoption of ICT Based Security Networking

Rabiu Omaku

A legal luminary in the country has recommended that the only panacea for a permanent peace would be attained through Information Communication Technology (ICT) based security networking and police reforms, Chief Mike Ozekhome (SAN) ,A constitutional lawyer and Human Right Activist stated this during a paper presentation titled “Democracy in Africa: The emerging Security Threats, Issues and Challenges” at the 5 and 15th award and gala night organized by Nigerian Pilot held at Transcorp hotel Abuja.

Ozekhome unveiled that African nations would only be free from insurgency, political violence and other miscellaneous crimes through the equipping military with hard wares, training and retraining, He emphasized the need for private-public alliance and partnership towards an urgent transformation of African security, He also commended for the need to promote peace, cultural and harmony through the aid of agents of socialization and peace guarantor.

He recommended that the Federal Government should invest in human and capital development through education of its citizen since education emancipates the mind, It makes it more difficult for recruiters of terrorism and other criminal activities to deceived and get gullible youths into nefarious criminal vices, He also recommended that proactive steps should be taken in the security communities via intelligence gathering as against naked brute military campaign as such will always nip potential acts of criminals and terrorist.

Political peace education and voter’s education should be intensified at all levels in other reduced the rising spate of thuggery and other ancillary electoral acts, The legal practitioner advice those at the behest of affairs in Africa to diverse means of creating job and encourage youths to go into all manners of small scale businesses, commercial enterprises, technology- driven productivity and mechanized farming.

African countries should create coast guards to compliment the navies in the fight against Boko Haram.

He also called on the need to revisits the fundamentals by developing effective counter terrorism strategies in Africa as an important steps towards the prevention of terrorism in the continent.

Ozekheme said African continent has witnessed and will continued to witness a litany of emerging and threatening event from terrorist ,drug baron ,and human. trafficking, piracy and election violence and other crimes,To dealt with that group ,He called on African leaders states and organizations to move beyond rhetorical clichés and genuinely take it upon themselves to develop African solutions to African problems by entrenching democratic norms through the building of strong institutions and taking deliberates steps towards arresting the myriad of insecurity abnormities via concerted efforts will be a good start .

“The United Nations office on Drugs and Crime identified West Africa with its ineffective policing and bribe able Governments and security forces as an emerging narcotic -region. That provides a convenient halfway stop for Latin America drug traders exporting to Europe, such international crime offers insurgents, militias, extreme political groups and terrorist organizations opportunities for financing their activities, He said heavily and sophisticated weapons are transported from West Africa across terrorist it controls other groups from West Africa terrorist group based in Africa.

He opined that African Government must follow strictly the tenets of democracy to be able to foster Good Governance which will in turn render nugatory ,The propensity of criminals  and their gangs their terrorist accomplices, African has weak security service and large number of unemployed youth ,He also said Africans must help Africans to attain its security target ,In doing so democracy must lead the way ,There is no short cut for it.

The legal luminary asserted that African nations are grappling with sticky situations ranging from difficult security challenges, He however affirmed that the difficulties resulted not only from magnitude of these challenges are lack of capacity of African states and organizations to respond quickly ,While wide swathes of Africa are compelled to deal with problems in an ad-hoc manner.

Other nagging challenges according Ozekhemo affecting the security of lives in Africa are

Increasing fragmentation of political authority across societies

Mounting political influence of armed substance actors

Fragmented loyalties of armed military officials and group

Crises in food security and public health

Increasing vigilantism as a societal response to the inability of depleted and often discredited state security agencies while other security challenges are

Terrorism

Piracy Drug Trafficking

Other organized crimes.

He also called on the Federal Government to boast her border patrol team who penetrated the country through a weak entry points within states structures and then exploit such institutional fragilities to their economic and political benefit, He said another aspect of threat to the security is the phenomenon plays out in the rising incidence of human trafficking throughout the continent especially in women and children trafficked ,He listed some factors of threat posed by human trafficking are poverty, traditions and cultural values, gender discrimination, social change, altering migratory patterns, labor requirements, evolution of the African family affected by rapid urbanization and marked by an alteration of the extended and community forms of solidarity, and the situation worse by instability or conflict, increasing demand ,sexual exploitation, etc.