Mustapha Akanbi Foundation Holds Security Summit

The Mustapha Akanbi Foundation, in collaboration with Ma’asalam Islamic Foundation (MIF), yesterday organised a security summit in Ilorin, Kwara State, during which scholars proffered solutions to the country’s security challenges.

In his presentation, Dr Akanni Waliyu Oladotun, called for the establishment of border community peace committees to monitor the movement of non-state actors through unofficial routes as a way of addressing the problem of insecurity in Kwara State and other parts of the country.

Oladotun, who is the coordinating head of the Department of Social Justice and Security Studies at Kwara State University, Malete, spoke on the topic: “Preserving the State of Harmony: Reclaiming the Kwara Identity in an Era of Prevalent Insecurity in Nigeria.”

He said that, since Kwara shares borders with the Benin Republic and several Nigerian states, the establishment of border community peace committees became imperative to address security challenges in the state.

He noted that to reclaim Kwara’s identity and ensure the sustainability of peaceful coexistence among residents, “we must move from reactive policing to proactive preservation”.

“The State of Harmony” cannot be defended solely by the government. It requires a tripartite alliance between the state, traditional institutions, and the citizenship”.

He mentioned reinvigoration of grassroots intelligence, institutionalising the “harmony fund”, securing the “green walls”, youth inoculation from “idle hands” to “vanguards” and digital resilience as some of the solutions to security challenges in the state.

For his part, the vice chairman of the Nigeria Union of Teachers (NUT), Kwara State chapter, Comrade Idris Danmaigoro, described security as the foundation of national development, adding that without security, there can be no meaningful progress in education, economy, health, or social harmony.

He identified injustice and leadership failure, poor access to education, corruption and unemployment, wrong educational policy, poverty and inequality, weak institutions and poor governance and ethnic and religious manipulation as some of the causes of insecurity in the country.

The chairman of the occasion and vice chancellor of Kwara State University, Malete, Prof. Shaykh-Luqman Jimoh, described the programme as timely and apt in view of the present security challenges in the country.

Represented by the director, Centre for Artificial Intelligence in the University, Dr Waheed Musa, Jimoh said KWASU was committed to collaborations that would ensure peaceful coexistence in the country and Kwara in particular.

On behalf of the Mustapha Akanbi Foundation (MAF) and the Massalam Islamic Foundation (MIF), Mallam Mudadhir and Mallam Toyin Ally, respectively, said the public lecture was jointly organised to follow in the footsteps of the founder of the two foundations, the late Justice Mustapha Akanbi, as a way of contributing their quota to stem the rising wave of insecurity in the country.