The National Orientation Agency has expressed worry over the security threat posed to Nigeria’s internal security.
This was just as the NOA said it is shocked by the recent target on schools by perpetrators of violence.
Disturbed by this scenario, the NOA engaged the Proprietors of schools across the country in a training on how to check such threats in their schools.
At the one-day security awareness campaign targeted at school proprietors by Global Safety and Security Limited, in partnership with the NOA, they were charged to be security conscious as students and pupils under their care often fall prey to security threats.
Speaking at the event, the Director General of the NOA, Garba Abari, said school children have suddenly become victims of kidnapping, with their abductors demanding for ransom, hence a need to checkmate this trend.
Abari, who was represented by the Director of the NOA in Plateau State, Bulus Dabit, expressed worry over the security threat to Nigeria’s internal security and urged proprietors to equip schools with security equipment to bring the menace under control.
According to him: “There has been serious threat to our internal security manifesting in diverse ways, ranging from armed robbery to hired assassination, kidnapping for ransom, ritual killing, human trafficking, pipeline vandalism, ethno-religious conflicts, incessant conflicts between herdsmen and farmers and the more worrisome Boko Haram insurgency and the recent violent uprising of the Niger Delta Avengers.
“The escalating rate of inflation, high level of poverty and unemployment, food insecurity, the fear of marginalization, political exclusion and the struggle for resources have tended to fuel most of this crises.”
Abari lamented that vulnerable school children have been a major target of attacks by purveyors of sorrow, blood and death, stating that from February 24, 2014 when 59 students of Government College, Burni Yadi, Yobe State were moved down in cold blood to April 14 of the same year when over 200 female students of Government Secondary School, Chibok in Borno State were kidnapped, stressing that the school system has witnessed all forms of attack on innocent and defenceless children.
The Plateau State NOA boss opined that for Nigeria to win the war against insecurity, the values of healthy society most be upheld, only then shall the country experience peace, internal security and social harmony.