The British Government on Tuesday urged Nigerian government to firm up strategies to tackle the growing unemployment as part of measures to addressing the root cause of insecurity in the country.
It said Nigeria’s security challenges were both overwhelming and multi-pronged and needed to be tackled from every side.
British High Commissioner to Nigeria, Catriona Laing, said on Wednesday when she appeared on Arise Television programme to discuss on Global Partnership for Education (GPE), which is ongoing in London.
“On the scourge of kidnapping, the police need to be able to deal with it,” Laing said.
“They need much more intelligence and therefore need to work with communities to identify these kidnappers.
“There is physical infrastructure that needs to be better. And the children need to know what to do; they need to be very well drilled if there is going to be an attack. Even with all those kind of measures, ultimately, you have got to get to the root causes, which is why this epidemic of kidnapping is happening in Nigeria.”
She said insecurity had worsen across Nigeria because more people that have been thrown into poverty and unemployment are finding alternative sources of income and tragically finding kidnapping as a means of livelihood.
“You have this farmer/herder sort of conflict and then kidnapping increasingly spreading around the country,” she said.
“In the northeast, its the Islamic State of West Africa (ISWAP). If you are a young man without a job, they present to you a viable alternative.Ultimately, employment opportunities are probably the single most valuable way to solve this underlying problem.
“There is the need to form community inter-peace dialogue to ensure that people that are preyed to stray can be brought back in through elders as well as religious leaders to persuade them that this is not the pathway.
The UK envoy said the farmer/herder conflict and associated kidnappings could be resolved through livestock ranching, adding that people’s means of livelihood would have to be preserved.
