The Rivers State chapter of Nigerian Institute of Public Relations (NIPR) last week organized a stakeholders’ roundtable to look at insecurity in the country and region and offer up solutions.
The event which held in Port-Harcourt was with the theme The Future of Niger Delta in the Current Security Turmoil in Nigeria and drew participants from the region.
Nigeria has been the hotbed of violence in recent months with kidnappings and violent attacks on security personnel and facilities drawing national and international concern.
Addressing participants at the occasion, the Chairman of the state body of the NIPR, Pastor Paulinus Nsirim, said that partisan interests should be sacrificed for the interest of the Niger Delta.
The chairman who is also the Commissioner for Information and Communications in the state said: “We feel that as a corporate and responsible social entity, we need to bring stakeholders to a roundtable to begin to tell the narrative that will proffer solutions to the nagging problem of insecurity in Nigeria especially in the Niger Delta”.
He added: “Partisan interest need to be thrown overboard, parochial interest need to be thrown overboard, ethnic, religious sentiment need to be thrown overboard. This is the time to think Nigeria, to think Niger Delta to think about our collective interest as a people”.
He said that the Niger Delta region was prominent as it produces the oil which sustains the country and said that the organization wanted to set agenda for national discourse over the security challenges.
He also said the media should play important role speaking up about the challenges and asking the government to find solutions to the problems of insecurity.
Delivering a keynote address, Amaopusenibo Bobo Sofiri Brown said that the issue at stake was about the present and the future saying that the people of the state should see the present situation as being at war and rally round the governor of the state for way out irrespective of political associations.
He also said that the security issues faced in the country had specific features.
He stressed the need for the region to again become a trading force to get respect from the northern part of the country by concentrating on comparative advantage.
He appealed that states in the region should handle the security challenge in cooperation with states in the South-East and South-West.
“The Niger Delta governors must swallow their pride and their personal differences and begin to understand that there is security in collective action”, he said, adding that “they need to come together and work out common areas where they can work together to build an economy for this region and build dignity for our people”.
In panel discussions the Dean of Faculty of Social Sciences in Rivers State University, Prof. Godwin Okon said that the security challenges facing the country should be tackled with technology. He also said that communities should tackle crime within limits of the law based on information sharing.
“A community management of crime may be the way forward” he said and added that “emphasis should be on intelligence sharing. Once there is intelligence sharing we are actually there”.
Also speaking the Director-General of Rivers State Neighbourhood Safety Corps Agency, Dr Uche Mike Chukwuma, said that the region should discuss its future and chart a way forward.
He also said that government should create jobs to avoid youth restiveness.
He said leaders of the region had not properly looked at the issue of insecurity and how it should be managed saying that without jobs there will be youth restiveness.
