Uba Sani, Governor of Kaduna State, has posited that political leaders’ approach to ending the poverty and insecurity in the country are wrong.
The Governor spoke at the 6th Annual Interfaith Peace Conference in partnership with the State government, on the theme “Tackling Poverty and Insecurity in Nigeria: Our Collective Responsibility.”
As Chairman of the occasion, Sani who noted that poverty and insecurity are the greatest challenges facing the country, said efforts at ending insecurity have been rather reactive than proactive.
“Poverty and insecurity are the greatest challenges facing our country. The rising level of poverty is a major cause of concern for our political leaders.
“Addressing the issue of poverty is critical to restoring people’s confidence in our democracy. We are still struggling to address development challenges, especially in the areas of infrastructure, education, health, agriculture and security,” he stated.
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According to him, it is time forall stakeholders to join hands to address the challenges, saying the starting point for offering solutions to the problems must be research and evidence based.
“Research has a key role to play in our search for workable solutions to the seemingly intractable challenges of insecurity. Once you know the root cause of the problem, you can develop effective immediate, short-term and long-term strategies to address it. Our responses have been ad hoc and reactive. They are not based on research. Our compass is wrong. We need to get the right compass.
“To make progress on security, we must ask the critical questions and develop the appropriate strategies. How can we redesign our security architecture to be proactive rather than reactive in tackling insecurity in Nigeria? This is where strategic thinking comes in. Security leaders and forces are better at tactical thinking. They want to deal with situations quickly and decisively. But the nature of our current and emerging security challenges require deeper thinking and planning. You have to study the nature of a given environment; the topography, the people, the culture, the politics and the changing dynamics,” Governor Sani added.
