President, National Union of Medical Herbal Practitioners (NUMHP), Prince Saka Oyedeji Mabro has described the approach of Federal Government to national security as lukewarm and insensitive.
He said the strategy presently adopted to fight insecurity in Nigeria does not reflect ‘local content’, which in his words continued to militate against efforts towards curbing criminality of all forms.
According to him, the heterogeneous nature of Nigeria requires an all-inclusive security approach such that brings every stakeholder on board from different strata of the society.
Mabro, in an interview on Sunday, opined that the most virile method of fighting criminality in an environment like Nigeria is to involve communities concerned in a manner that sets out direction through ‘home-grown’ tactics.
He insisted that successive governments at the federal level in Nigeria have failed to give definite direction to the federating units on the best approach to tackle insecurity.
“As Africans, with rich cultural heritage in all facets of live, especially in the area of protecting communities against internal uprising and external aggression, we ought not to have found ourselves in this sorry state of insecurity.
“No nation can successfully fight insecurity with complete imported method, without putting into consideration her local advantage and strength.
“This government has underutilised the Nigerian local advantage and strength, which had been a veritable instrument of solving several socioeconomic challenges in different communities in the pre-colonial Nigeria.
“For instance, our local hunters possess spiritual capacity to locate hideouts of criminals and even command them into submission with ease.
“The local science of bulletproof is still very much intact with our people, in which the government can explore by genuinely engaging local communities in the fight against insurgency, kidnappings and other form of criminality.
“For instance, how would you expect a police officer from the South East of the country to understand and locate the hideouts of criminals in Osun forest, or Benue.
“Security architecture encompasses native knowledge and satisfactory understanding of local terrain. It is high time the Federal Government look inward and change her approach,” Mabro said.
Speaking on the spate of insecurity in Osun State, the senior citizen expressed reservation over the response of the government in the state to the resurgence of criminality.
He wondered what could have gone wrong within a short period in which the state, formerly adjudged as most peaceful in the country, suddenly became volatile.
“I think the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC, has a lot of questions to answer. The last government in the state claimed to have spent billions of naira in procuring certain security hardware, including Helicopter for surveillance.
“Where are those hardware claimed to have been bought by taxpayers’ money, at the period when the state was in serious economic predicament. Where is the Helicopter?” he queried.
