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The Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) and Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps are partnering to explore areas of strategic collaboration to strengthen security on campuses across tertiary institutions.
The move comes in the wake of pockets of attacks and abduction of students in some parts of the country.
The Commandant General of NSCDC, Prof. Ahmed Abubakar Audi in a courtesy visit to the headquarters of the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) noted that despite reduction in attacks on Nigerian schools, the corps needs the support of stakeholders to tackle the challenge.
Discussions focused on the need to establish a robust framework for inter-agency collaboration on training of private security guards on Nigerian campuses, support for Corps’ training institutions and research as well as securing Nigeria’s educational environment, and strengthening the nexus between security and education.
The commandant sought the support of TETFund to upgrade the Corps’ six training institutions, specifically the College of Security Management in Abeokuta, to ensure career progression and world class development for officers.
He dismissed claims that the Corps was not on top of its job in protection of schools across the country.
He said: “If you have been following the trend, including its trajectory, you would have seen that the attacks have not remained unabated. If you have the history, the attacks were very high in 2001, 2002, 2003. It was after then that the country launched what we call the Safe School Initiative, after the visit of Gordon Brown, and then of course, the safe school financing.
“Now, it started during the attack of Chibok Girls and then afterwards. But recently, the attacks got stopped, although we have some pockets, which is also under control. Fundamentally, the corps has viewed the whole concept of providing security and safety for schools to be a whole-of-society approach, where you have all the stakeholders, security agencies, including stakeholders like the TETFund, the National Universities Commission (NUC), all the schools, to really come together, to work together.”
He said the Corps is also involved in inter-agency collaboration to fight the menace considering the limited numbers of personnel.
“That’s why you will see the police are involved, the military are involved, the school communities. In fact, even the communities where we have the traditional rulers and others are involved in the whole gamut of the provision of security for the schools.
“But there are fundamental challenges that we need to really tell ourselves. For example, in the survey we conducted, we got a data of over 81,000 schools, and we said, out of these 81,000 schools, over 60,000 are porous, no fencing of the schools and security man. Then the whole of Civil Defense Corps is 63,000.”
He called for the whole-of-society approach to the challenge as the security agencies cannot do it alone.
“Now, if you deploy one per school, including the Commandant General to provide security and safety for schools, I want to ask you whether it’s going to be enough. So that’s why we said it should be the whole-of-society approach. That’s the concept where we collaborate with all security agencies to provide security.”
The Executive Secretary of TETFund, Arc. Sonny Echono, acknowledged the tremendous work the NSCDC has been doing in collaboration with other security agencies to keep the country safe, while also reaffirming the readiness of the Fund to extend it’s hand of fellowship and support.