The National Coordinator, Financing Safe Schools Initiative, Mrs Halima Iliya, says plans are underway to actively engage hunters and vigilantes on intelligence gathering to curb attacks on schools across the country.
The National Coordinator gave this indication in an
interview on Sunday in Abuja.
She said that aggressive community engagements and
sensitization of students, parents and teachers will kick off in the second
quarter of the year.
“As a component of the plan, for states with local
vigilantes, we intend to train their hunters, vigilantes and volunteers while
for states without registered vigilantes, we intend to advocate using youths.
“Youths will volunteer to protect their communities because
we cannot achieve anything within a community without their involvement.
“We will bring them to the security architecture for them to
defend and protect their communities in the areas of intelligence gathering,
prevention and detection deterrent capabilities,” Iliya said.
Iliya disclosed that there are plans to also use the
platform of the National Orientation Agency (NOA) because of their presence in
all the local governments.
She said they will be used to reach out to the grassroots by
developing some training manuals that could be converted to local dialects of
communities for efficient communication.
“We are done with the second phase of the implementation of
the safe schools national plan where all security agencies involved have
trained their personnel on safe schooling which has been streamed into their
operations.
“We have also written
to all states, including the FCT, to furnish us with information on the most
at-risk schools in the three senatorial zones and one tertiary institution.
“We want states to take ownership then we tailor the
intervention towards this as these are the ways to make a significant impact,”
she said.
Ahmed Audi, Commandant General (CG), Nigeria Security and
Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC), said the Corps, being the lead agency in the
protection of schools, is dedicated to ensuring that schools are adequately
protected in collaboration with other security agencies.
“That is why the three Cs; coordination, cooperation and
collaboration cannot be over-emphasised as this has yielded results amongst
security agencies in recent operations so I think we are on the right track,”
he said.
According to Audi, because the NSCDC regulates the
operations of Private Guard Companies (PGCs), they have been leveraged to
contribute their quota to the security architecture of the country by providing
intelligence reports.
He said that the Corps had introduced the School Community
Security Vanguard which has a non-kinetic approach in engaging communities,
parents/teachers associations, traditional rulers and youth leaders in various
communities to discuss security issues.
The National Safe School Response Coordination Centre
(NSSRCC) Commander, Hameed Abodunrin, said that the Center had engaged in
continuous sensitization of schools on the risks and dangers associated with
not being security conscious.
Abodunrin, however, said that during the sensitization
programmes, operatives were careful to avoid creating unnecessary panic in the
minds of citizens.
“Research has shown that the fear of insecurity is worse
than insecurity itself,” he said.
He also revealed that there are plans to conduct a School
Security Awareness training with the acronym, SAFE, involving a pocket-size
security tips book that every student in Nigeria should have. NAN
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