National Security implies the protection of a country and its citizenry from internal and external aggression. Security is next to life; the pivot upon which all human endeavours and activities evolve, and in any case; where there is no security there cannot be any meaningful development. Security is the fulcrum or propeller upon which other things evolve, and a Nation that treats her security network with levity rips instability in all her policies.
National Security is also seen as the ability of a nation to respond appropriately in a national and international crisis, which relies on a well structured security system run or regulated as the case maybe by the Federal Government.
A school of thought said: “Our national security is a condition where our most cherished values and beliefs, our democratic way of life, our institutions of governance and our unity, welfare and well-being as a nation and people are permanently protected against all threats and continuously enhanced in spite of different challenges”.
Nigeria as a developing nation has witnessed lots of threats to its national security, which is internal in nature. The persistent killing, maiming and bombing of innocent citizens, especially in the
Northern part of the country by the Islamic Sect popularly called ‘Boko Haram’ has called for a great concern.
Due to lapses in Nigeria’s National Security, the Delta State Commissioner of Police, Mr. Ikechukwu Aduba in his paper entitled:
“National Security: Issues in Policing, Rule of Law and Public Relation Practice” argued that there is no standardised method of point of entry into the Armed Forces; the Police; the State Security Service, SSS, and other paramilitary organisations in the country.
Mr. Ikechukwu Aduba further suggested some way forward to include standardised method of entry points for all persons desirous of enlisting into any of the nation’s security institution, balanced reportage of incidents of violent crime and other forms of criminality, citizens’ strive to be part of communal intelligence network, amongst others.
Also delivering a lecture tagged: “National Security: Issues in Governance, Rule of Law and Public Relations Practice”, the Commissioner of Police, RTD, Mr. Frank Odita regretted that the national security environment was infused with major internal threats which could potentially have devastating effects on the country and jeopardise its continued unity and existence.
Odita opined that political public relations is a two-way tackle
engagement: party politics and the other for government in power, just
as he stated that its practitioners in the crisis-ridden century cannot do without establishing the trends of the political cum economic and social environments of his area of focus and operation, and the relevant public.
He, however, described public relations politics as an agent of goodwill, rapport and popularity, political stability, political education and enlightenment as well as social responsibility of individual citizens and government.
All these internal national security threats prompted the Nigerian Institute of Public Relations, Delta State Chapter, to discuss in their well-articulated lectures on National Security, its threat to Nigeria and its citizens.
The most important challenges Nigeria face as a nation and people presently include terrorism; the advent of Boko Haram and its continued onslaught against the Nigerian state and its peoples. In spite of government’s efforts at quelling the group’s activities, and its offer to engage in constructive peace negotiating with the group, it has continued to launch attacks at different targets and rejected any attempt at peace. Succinctly, Nigerian government needs to find an effective strategy of dealing with this problem, otherwise the country’s national security might become irreparably compromised.
Another internal threat is organised crime and criminality, this merits significant attention, which may shake the country to its very foundations. This entails violent crimes such as kidnapping, armed robberies, murder, amongst others that have become very commonplace across the country, even as the criminals seem to be growing in confidence, which is evidenced by how they carry out their activities with impunity. This is a very dangerous threat to national security and the government would have to find ways of reducing these crimes to the barest minimum.
Other kinds of internal national security threat are Grave Incidence of Poverty; Economic Sabotage; Graft and Corruption, and so on.
As it were, governance calls for combination of the application of the
intellectual power with foresight and patience to listen to different shades of opinion and the voice of reasoning, the ability to remain disciplined or steadfast in the face of temptations, and the courage to carry out authorised functions effectively. This is because the style of government makes inputs directly or indirectly on the life of individual citizens of the country and indeed all inhabitants of the state or nation. Governance therefore, needs proactive measures for its day-to-day business, leaving reactive measures to occasions where counter propaganda may be wholly necessary in the interest of the nation.
Analysts are of the opinion that in government, different forces are in conflict and daily competing for attention; under the pressure, the executive may be tempted to take actions which are later found to be ineffective or error of judgment, thereby drawing criticisms from the opposition, social critics and the watchful mass media.
They argued that errors leading to grave consequences will not only cause stress in the society, but can induce blackmail from selfish interest groups capitalising on consequences, sometimes forcing the government to take pacifist measures, that could be described as wastage but favourable to the selfish interests; this is what is called “dirty politics”. Proactive measures for the purpose of avoiding unwanted situations in government today, is better based on reliable public opinion research finding and analysis, at the onset of acquiring the political power ideas collated from leaders of thought, analysis of independent opinion polls and recommendation.
Expectedly, one may like to know; “how patriotic and zealous are we in the implementation of laws bordering on security in our country?”
Today, it has been made manifest that if a Nigerian citizen steps into another country, an alarm is raised! Is the same action replicated here in Nigeria when we set eyes on citizens from other countries entering our own country through numerous border posts?
To this end, a drastic re-vitalisation of the nation’s estates and cottage industries with conducive environment for mechanised farming schemes is needed to properly engage the teeming unemployed youths so as to disabuse their mind from crime, because “an idle mind is the devil’s workshop”.
We must retrace our footsteps and go back to basics. There must be meaningful turnaround of our power sector to re-invigorate our cottage industries and properly engage majority of our citizens. Also, genuine effort must be made by government to re-organise and modernise the entire nation’s security agencies to reflect the new priorities of the war against terror and violent crimes.
Mr. Aduba, however, noted that the current trend of un-harmonised parallel functions by the security agencies has apparently deprived the society of the synergy that should necessarily accrue from their joint efforts. According to him, it is our humble opinion that we take a cue from the USA wherein the government, while waging war against terror took bold step to bring together domestic security agencies which historically had been scattered throughout the executive branch of the government under the umbrella of the Department of Homeland Security, and established a Directorate of National Intelligence to ensure that all Intelligence Agencies would work together in tracking terrorist threats and violent crimes and also preventing new attacks.
Moreover, on crisis resolution related to politics and governance, one can subscribe to the viewpoint of a Nigerian Security Consultant, M.O. Ollorwi, 2001, who stated that today’s protection professional are always searching for comprehensive answers to complicated crisis situations particularly in volatile climate of disaffected groups of
internal and international terrorists. Ollorwi explained further that with commercial sectors’ vulnerabilities to cyber and physical attacks, and the potential for loss of lives and destabilisation to cities, industries, the military, security agents the police, and the economy, the degree of sophistication for protection mechanism is no longer a nicety, but a national security imperative. He clarified that loss reduction via remedies such as relying on insurance, throwing money at it or betting the odd that it would not happen, rather than security, which is loss prevention tantamount to employing disaster formulas, and such remedies result in loss of lives, severe damage to national economy and heightened fears of insecurity by the citizenry.
Relating the crisis issues to the protection of infrastructural assets, Ollorwi then professed that the comprehensive threat assessment should no longer be “a matter of if we should do it, but how we should proceed”.