The National Coordinator, Financing Safe Schools Initiative, Mrs Halima Iliya, says plans are underway to actively engage hunters and vigilantes in intelligence gathering to curb attacks on schools across the country.
Iliya gave this indication in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria on Sunday in Abuja.
She said aggressive community engagements and sensitisation of students, parents and teachers would kick off 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 to use 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.
She added that her agency engaging would work with the National Orientation Agency to reach out to the grassroots.
“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.
The Commandant General, Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps, Dr Ahmed Audi, said the corps, being the lead agency in the protection of schools, was dedicated to ensuring that schools were adequately protected in collaboration with other security agencies.
“That is why the three Cs – coordination, cooperation and collaboration – cannot be overemphasised as this has yielded results amongst 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, they have been leveraged to contribute their quota to the security architecture of the country by providing intelligence reports.
The National Safe School Response Coordination Centre Commander, Hameed Abodunrin, said that the centre had engaged in continuous sensitisation of schools on the risks and dangers associated with not being security conscious.
“Research has shown that the fear of insecurity is worse than insecurity itself,” he said.
