By Daniel Tyokua
Former chief security officer to late military head of state Sani Abacha, Major Hamza Al-Mustapha (retd), on Wednesday called on Africans to work in synergy to unravel domains of conflict areas on the continent.
He stated this at the commencement of maiden international peace conference with a theme: ‘Promoting Empirical Research for Peace Practice and Safety in Africa; a peer review, organised by African Peace Institute for Social Research & Apudi Institute for Peace Studies and Social Rehabilitation in conjunction with UN office on genocide prevention in Abuja on Wednesday.
Al-Mustapha who admitted that past leaders didn’t live up to the expectations, explained that things will be fixed, especially in Nigeria if right approaches are adopted by the current leaders and fellow citizens.
He identified training, education, economic empowerment, reorientation and enculturalization as key programmes that must be taken more serious to achieve the desired results.
According to him, concerted efforts would open the window of collaborations and partnership with Agencies, sister NGO’s and Institutes both locally and internationally to tackle issues that will end insecurity.
Al-Mustapha who is also the president and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) , APUDI Institute for Peace Studies and Social Rehabilitation (APISa), said the present security challenge faced by the country is horrific, and require a systematic, scientific approach to resolving it.
According to him, the security situation in Nigeria and indeed most African nations, has been neglected for so long and has degenerated to the level where the mechanism of damage control become inevitable in finding solutions to the intractable challenges of banditry, terrorism, and violent crimes.
He insisted that decades of neglect of the security challenges have made it a herculean task to manage and pulling the country alright.
Al-Mustapha further stated that modern empirical, systematic, and scientific approache must be adapted to reverse the trend of insecurity, which is ravaging the world.
The former presidential Candidate of Action Alliance (AA) in the 2023 General Elections, explained that the institute was formed in 2013 after he regained his freedom.
Noting that it started as the Al-Mustapha Peace and Development Initiative (APUDI), which was a result of several engagements across the six geopolitical zones on the need to build bridges of understanding, unity, and tolerance among Nigerians, irrespective of socio-cultural, religious, and ethnic differences.
In his remark, the Director General of APUDI, Prof. Danladi Atu, said the Institute decided to organize the Conference to bring various experts in the field together to generate workable, viable, accurate, and reliable data that would assist in addressing the multifaceted challenge of insecurity across Nigeria and indeed Africa.
He stated that data generation on security issues is challenging and most times people fabricate data, which hamper realistic solutions towards addressing the challenge.
Atu said the conference is also aimed at building synergy with experts in the field toward coming out with empirical-driven solutions.
