Mrs. Halima Iliya, the National Coordinator of the Safe Schools Initiative for Financing, has announced that initiatives are in progress to involve hunters and vigilantes in gathering intelligence to prevent attacks on schools nationwide.
The National Coordinator conveyed this information during an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Sunday in Abuja.
She stated that active community involvement and educational outreach to students, parents, and teachers will commence in the second quarter of the year.
“As a component of the plan, for states with local vigilantes, we intend to train their hunters, vigilantes, and volunteers while for states without registered vigilantes, we intend to advocate the use of youths.
“Youths will volunteer to protect their communities because we cannot achieve anything within a community without their involvement.
“We will bring them to the security architecture for them to defend and protect their communities in the areas of intelligence gathering, prevention, and detection deterrent capabilities,” Iliya said.
Iliya revealed plans to utilize the National Orientation Agency (NOA) platform due to its widespread presence across all local governments.
She mentioned utilizing them to connect with grassroots communities by creating training manuals that can be translated into local dialects for effective communication.
“We are done with the second phase of the implementation of the safe schools national plan where all security agencies involved have trained their personnel on safe schooling which has been streamed into their operations.
“We have also written to all states, including the FCT, to furnish us with information on the most at-risk schools in the three senatorial zones and one tertiary institution.
“We want states to take ownership then we tailor the intervention towards this as these are the ways to make a significant impact,” she said.
Dr. Ahmed Audi, Commandant General (CG), Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC), said the Corps, being the lead agency in the protection of schools, is dedicated to ensuring that schools are adequately protected in collaboration with other security agencies.
“That is why the three Cs; coordination, cooperation, and collaboration cannot be overemphasized as this has yielded results among security agencies in recent operations so I think we are on the right track,” he said.
According to Audi, because the NSCDC regulates the operations of Private Guard Companies (PGCs), they have been leveraged to contribute their quota to the security architecture of the country by providing intelligence reports.
He said that the Corps had introduced the School Community Security Vanguard which has a non-kinetic approach to engaging communities, parents/teachers associations, traditional rulers, and youth leaders in various communities with a view to discussing security issues.
The National Safe School Response Coordination Centre (NSSRCC) Commander, Hameed Abodunrin, said that the Center had engaged in continuous sensitization of schools on the risks and dangers associated with not being security conscious.
Abodunrin, however, said that during the sensitization programs, operatives were careful to avoid creating unnecessary panic in the minds of citizens.
“Research has shown that the fear of insecurity is worse than insecurity itself,” he said.
He also revealed that there are plans to conduct a School Security Awareness training with the acronym, SAFE, involving a pocket-size security tips book that every student in Nigeria should have.
