Promote security; teach security education, expert advises govts, schools

Prof. Oyesoji Aremu, a security scholar at the University of Ibadan, has stressed the need to expose school children to some basic security education to halt the spate of insecurity.

Aremu stated this in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Ibadan on Monday.

He said such knowledge would get them equipped mentally and skillfully for likely events of insecurity.

“This could also help such children on community intelligence of where their schools are located.

“More than we used to contend with, the toll of insecurity in many schools in Nigeria is not only frightening and disturbing, it is getting out of hand and comes in succession.

“Recently and within a spate of two months, there were two cases of abductions of school children and significant others in Kankara and Kagara in Katsina and Niger states respectively.

“The signals here portend some worrying to school children, parents, grandparents and others,” he said.

Aremu said that school insecurity as we now begin to have prior to Chibok girls’ abduction in 2014 is taking shines away from teaching and learning.

He noted that in securing our schools, governments both federal and states could begin to initiate solution-based proactive policies and strategies.

“One of these is deployment of security personnel as we used to have in the 70s when soldiers were part of school personnel.

“Given the spate of insecurity as we now have, this policy can be revisited by deploying personnel of Nigeria Civil Defence Corps and that of Western Nigeria Security Network (Amotekun) and other similar security agencies.

“Private schools’ owners can also leverage on this by engaging services of security personnel 24 hours. School watch is very essential these days to proactively counter insecurity.

“Other school security strategies include the provision of CCTV camera, regulation of school access territorially, and surveillance with a view to collecting intelligence.

“It is also instructive for the federal government to review its policy on School Safety Initiative given the insecurity reality,” Aremu said. (NAN)