Foremost criminologist, Professor Kayode Adedeji on Monday, November 22, 2021, asked President Muhammadu Buhari, state governors and local government chairmen to rescue Nigeria from the “grip of destructive forces of criminality.”
This was just as the Nigerian Society for Criminology called for knowledge-based intervention and synergy among all levels of government to nip security challenges in the bud.
Professor Adedeji stated this in his introductory remarks in a webinar organised by the Nigeria Society for Criminology entitled “Criminology and Contemporary Security Challenges in Nigeria,” during which papers on different aspects of crime, social problems and security management were presented by Professor Adeyinka Aderinto, Professor Emmanuel Gyong, Dr Ezeji Chiji, and Dr Phillip Ndubueze among others.
According to him, government seemed unable to tackle the problems of insecurity partly due to inadequacy of knowledge or due to the fire brigade approach usually employed in addressing issues in Nigeria.
He urged members of the society to make findings of their researches available to policy actors as their contribution towards ending the spate of insecurity.
In his paper, “Historical and Contemporary Overview of Security Challenges in Nigeria,” Professor Aderinto traced the origin of contemporary insecurity to trust gap, injustice which birthed ethnic agitations and kidnapping in the Niger-Delta region.
“Despite years of independence, insecurity is still Nigeria’s biggest challenge and is fast becoming Nigeria’s identity. Although the origin of security challenges in the country cannot be clearly ascertained, it is researched to have started after the civil war….the 1966 coup and the resultant civil war. The distrust that emanated from these experiences provides strong currents driving insecurity today and many ethnic agitations have arisen many decades after the war. This is further worsened by the downturn in the economic fortunes of the country following the end of oil boom in the 1980s.”
The don asked government to deal with the root causes of insecurity to end the present social problem which he argued was causing the diversion of money ideally meant for developmental purposes to provide security.
Professor Aderinto, who noted that crimes were local, added: “Government alone cannot surmount the problem because all problems are local. A synergy of all levels of government will do a lot to end the problem.”
Professor Emmanuel Gyong, and Drs Ezeji chiji and Phillip Ndubueze emphasised the need for intelligence-led policing, good governance founded on justice, accountability and due process, and the use of technology in curbing modern security threats.
Earlier, renown criminologist, Prof Etannibi Alemika had stated that criminological knowledge and researches were needed more than ever before to assist the country in navigating the contemporary security challenges, adding that evidence-based scientific interventions would be useful in formulating the right security policies.
