CLEEN Foundation Calls for Civil Military Relationship in Critical Conflict States
From Tongnaan Bawa, Jos
The Executive Director, CLEEN Foundation, Gad Peter Shamaki, has called for mutual relationship between civilians and military personnel in states affected by conflict.
He cited Borno, Plateau and Zamfara as
Conflict-affected states critical for maintaining peace, security, and community resilience.
Gad Shamaki was speaking at a two day workshop on Regional Dissemination On Security Dynamics, Solutions and the Civil – Military Relationship (CMR) organized by CLEEN FOUNDATION, Alert, and supported by Open Society for Africa (OSA) for civil society organizations (CSOs) and security personnel at Valada Hotel and resorts in Jos.
He said the workshop aimed promoting excellence in public safety and security through the development of professional standards and the delivery of quality service by security agencies.
The Director explained that it would also improve the effectiveness of Legislation and civilian oversight function, to Human Right abuse as well as identify challenges, and propose strategies for improvement.
According to him, the foundation had recently publicly unveiled the research findings which is fundamental to promotion of civil -military relationship and cooperation then decided to disseminate such to stakeholders in the states affected by conflict.
On his part, the program director CLEEN Foundation, Salaudeen Hashim while speaking on the topic, “Understanding Civil – Military relationship, disclosed that civil-military relationship in the country is unstable hence the need to gather stakeholders to finding an institutionalization towards making it function properly.
He pointed out that the military had made some efforts to institutionalized this by setting up a directorate for civil-military relationship as well as having a legal desk.
He maintained that the whole idea was about the efficacy and performance of the directorate and how they have helped to contained and solve problems inorder to project the people concerned.
He emphasized that some major threats to National security in Nigeria are environment, Health, community, personal, food, economic and political issues. Adding that all these relates to human security, individuals, groups , communities and states.
Challenges of the threats Hashim enumerated were flooding,diseases, ethic clashes, rape, malnutrition, poverty and militancy.
Olaniyi Olumuyiwa, the research, strategy development officer of CLEEN Foundation, while discussing the topic, contexualise CMR in Plateau, identify local Government and evaluate the situation and solutions, attributed them to early warning/early response, security presence, accountability for rights abuse,and community policing versus community police among others.
Also contributing, President of Plateau State Peace Practitioners Network, Naman Debadi, said the training was to enhance and deepened civil – military relationship especially in conflict states in the country.
He noted that the military and the civilian need more orientation and education to understand themselves for peaceful coexistence in the society.
Our correspondent reports that during the syndicate session, participants were enthusiastic about the topic and exhibited their professional skills most especially those in the security agencies.
The two days training workshop engaged participants on an overview of the event’s purpose of the dissemination, discussion on the implications of research findings for Policy and practice.
Participants however called on CLEEN Foundation to implement outcome of discussions and to profer solutions to local government with security challenges.
They all appreciated the Foundation for the opportunity accorded to them to exchange ideas on harnessing ways of mutual relationship between the civilians and military
