Abuja – The National Orientation Agency (NOA) says it has formed an alliance with all stakeholders in the area of security to sensitise and mobilise Nigerians toward sustainable peace and security.
Mr Mike Omeri, the Director- General of the agency disclosed this during a seminar organised by NOA for Security Stakeholders tagged “Closing the Security Gaps’’ on Tuesday in Abuja.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that series of security awareness programmes are being carried out by the agency to significantly improve security in the country.
Omeri, in his opening speech, said that the commitment of the Federal Government and the armed forces to achieve victory in the fight against insurgency could not be overemphasised.
The NOA boss said that victory was in sight for the country because Boko Haram was suffering drastic reduction in capacity to manufacture Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs).
He attributed this to the insurgents’ inaccessibility of production materials.
Omeri advised the citizenry to maintain high level of vigilance to check the insurgents’ desperation to continue to inflict pain on the populace.
He implored everyone to be his or her brother’s keeper and to discourage the “non-challant attitude in the belief that security is strictly the business of government’’.
“If the populace has no role to play, we will be endangering the very soul of Nigeria; we cannot afford to do that because we have no other country which we can call our own.
“In NOA, we have forged a number of useful partnerships with some key stakeholders.
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“They include the military and other security experts, civil societies organisations, the Media and members of the public for effective sensitisation and education on security issues,’’ Omeri said.
The NOA boss called for all hands to be on deck to support and complement the heroic efforts of the military by remaining vigilant and availing security agencies of useful information about suspicious characters.
A book titled: “Effects of Terrorism on Children’’ authored by a nine year-old girl, Splendor King, was presented to the DG and the general public.
Miss King said her passion for humanity informed her writing of the book as her own little way of fighting against the insurgency.
According to King, “if the insurgents are well trained by their parents or guardians, they will probably not have ended up becoming terrorists.
“I believe that the insurgents we see today were once children like us; if they were properly educated and trained, they may not have ended up as terrorists.
“Terrorism, we all know, is not just war of weapons and ammunition, but also of ideologies; the only way we can change these ideologies is by child education,’’ King said.
King appealed for the introduction of effects of terrorism in education curriculum as a programme in all schools in order to rid future generation of such tendencies.
She said that she drew her inspiration from Nelson Mandela’s words: “ Education is the most powerful weapon we can use to change the world’’. (NAN)