Ahead of the 2023 general elections, major presidential candidates have listed measures they would take to tackle insecurity if elected.
They spoke Sunday night in Abuja at the at the town hall meeting series for presidential candidates, organised by the Centre for Democracy and Development (CDD) in collaboration with ARISE Television, Daily Trust and other partners.
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They are Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Peter Obi of the Labour Party (LP), Rabiu Kwankwaso of the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP) and Abdulateef Kola Abiola of the Peoples Redemption Party (PRP).
Daily Trust reports that Ahmed Bola Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress (APC) was absent; while Atiku was represented by his running mate, Ifeanyi Okowa.
The candidates were asked how they would tackle insecurity, especially in the wake of the recent Kaduna train attack.
Kwankwaso pledged to revamp the nation’s security architecture by increasing the number of security personnel.
“As a former Minister of Defence, I can assure you that the situation would not have even been allowed. The number of Nigeria’s military and police, which is respectively above 250,000, is grossly inadequate. I, therefore, would have made adequate arrangement to have one million military; Air Force and Navy, and with that, we believe we’re going to take over every square metre of our land in this country,” Kwankwaso said.
Atiku said Nigeria needed a very coordinated intelligence gathering which should be operationalized it “in such a manner that all security agencies are able to have a shared intelligence and work collectively for the collective good of Nigeria.
“That apparently is not happening at the moment. I’m a governor and I can see and I see what’s going on. So, we need to ensure there’s a coordinated arrangement among the security agencies.
“But in the medium term, we must be looking at the evolving the police force so that the states should be able to have their own police and operationalize their own police,” Atiku said.
Obi said if elected, he would improve intelligence processing.
“Today, in Nigeria, you have 35% unemployment with our youth. With your youths, who are in productive age, you have 60% youths unemployed. You can’t have that, and won’t have crisis. That’s where the guns are domiciled.
“So, you replace that with job, you replace it with employment, you invest in your micro small businesses, where these youths are domiciled by supporting them, pulling them out of poverty,” he said.
On his part, Kola Abiola said: “There’s a need to go back and address our security defence architecture. Over the years, there’s been a lot of talk about reviewing that making it get better.
“By the time you take your National Defence Force, you take the DSS, you take all these units together with your police, you’re looking at almost 800,000 to 900,000 personnel and that’s the way to address the problem.”
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