Ilorin – Maj.-Gen. Sunday Adebayo, the Commandant, Nigeria Army Education Corps (NAEC), on Thursday urged the Federal Government to introduce security education in the country’s education curriculum.
Adebayo made the call at the 2014 NAEC Second Quarters Conference held at Sobi Barracks, Ilorin.
The commandant said that this would enable pupils and students to imbibe the culture of security consciousness right from the primary to the tertiary level.
Adebayo said that the issue of security should be the concern of everybody and not the military alone.
According to him, if every Nigerian child is introduced to security education early, they will become more informed about security issues, challenges and how to cope with such challenges.
The commandant described Boko Haram insurgency as a national tragedy that requires the assistance of all Nigerians to overcome.
Adebayo said that the corps had witnessed transformation in the areas of infrastructure development through the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFUND).
Adebayo urged participants to be actively involved in the conference and turned its outcome into a blue print on the way out of the nation’s security challenges.
Retired Brig.-Gen. Joe Komolafe, in a lecture at the conference, called for total overhauling and review of the security sector to effectively tackle insurgency in the country.
He spoke on: “National Security and Challenges of Terrorism in Nigeria: Implication for the Military”.
Komolafe, who is also the Executive Officer of Oakland Security, said that terrorism had become a serious threat to the country.
He said that the operational modes of terrorists and insurgents today had made change of military tactics imperative from that of military hardware to asymmetric warfare.
Komolafe called for intensive training of the military in asymmetric warfare as well as intelligent gathering.
According to him, lack of data base, proliferation of small and light arms, poor intelligence gathering, obsolete military gadgets and inadequate manpower training are challenges of the military in tackling terrorism.
He said domestic terrorism had shown that members of the insurgents were drawn largely from unemployed graduates and poverty stricken masses.
Komolafe advised NAEC to partner with the Federal Government, ministries of education and tertiary institutions to conduct researches into the content of the insurgency menace.
Earlier, in his remark, Maj.-Gen. Garba Wahab, who represented the Chief of Army Staff, said that the issue of security should concern everybody in the society.
He said that adequate intelligence report was needed to effectively tackle insurgency in the country. (NAN)