DEVELOPING A PEOPLE’S SECURITY ECOSYSTEM IN A CHALLENGING ENVIRONMENT

DEVELOPING A PEOPLES’ SECURITY ECOSYSTEM
IN A CHALLENGING ENVIRONMENT
BY
TANKO AHMED, fwc
Former NIPSS Snr Fellow (Security & Strategic Studies)
CEO, Tsangaya Human Resource and Management Services
Dutse, Jigawa State

Being A Paper Presented at The Alumni Association of The National Defence College (AANDEC) Nigeria
National Security Seminar
THEME:
Developing A Functional Participatory National Security Ecosystem
NATIONAL DEFENCE COLLEGE – ABUJA, NIGERIA
2-3 March 2021

A medical team reviews a patient under the supervision of the
Chief Consultant.
The patient’s bedhead ticket indicates adequate procedural
treatment but still gasping for more oxygen.
The medical team cites stabled pulse, temperature, and scanning
reports as signs of improvement.
The experienced Chief Consultant calmly insists that the patient
could have been better.

The Chief Consultant examines the patient’s respiratory function
and declares that the lungs are collapsing.
There is an urgent need for physical therapy to the lungs requiring
the patient to blow balloons.
The blowing of balloons expands the patient’s lungs, restores
smooth respiration, and fast recovery.
Stone charts drive analogical infusions for thinking constructs on
complex topics like the people’s security ecosystem in a challenging
environment.

A complex issue like the peoples’ security ecosystem in an
unpredictable challenging environment is attended to by
professionals in specialised agencies like a medical team on a
patient with collapsing lungs.
The entire hospital system represents the government providing
the enabling environment to patients and medical personnel,
along with supervisory consultants.
Solutions to complex issues or environments may not always lie
within procedural approach only, but also innovative measures.

It is like blowing balloons to restore collapsing lungs, or
developing a peoples’security ecosystem centrifugal to an
existing national security architecture.
Thus, the deployment of stone chats as structuralist
approach as analogies in scientific study to demonstrate
syntagmatic relationships between similar incidences in
search of constructive understanding for complex issues
like the subject of peoples’security ecosystem.

INTRODUCTION
‘… If the eyes look down calmly it will see the noise …’
A Nigerian (Yoruba) Adage

Background
• The idea of a people's security ecosystem does not necessarily
require the physical mobilisation, training, and equipping the
people as part of the nation's security structure, but rather a
process of re-organising the people to participate and contribute
to such efforts.
• The development of a people's security ecosystem in a challenging
environment is therefore centrifugal to the existing national
security structure or architecture practiced in many countries
including Nigeria.
• Similarly, the prospect of developing a functional participatory
national security ecosystem is equally suggestive of an expanded
tent approach in the national security management process in
focus.

Statement of the Problem
Security challenges permeate and spread in all forms and
directions as the level of security service delivery is directly
related to the existence of risk, and impact, of security threats at
all levels.
A Nigerian (Yoruba) infers that:
'… If the eyes look down calmly it will see the noise …’
The existing and centralised 'national security architecture'
needs reinforcement with a new people-centered participatory
'national security ecosystem' approach.

Objectives of the Paper
The paper looks into ways of developing a people's
security ecosystem in a challenging environment within
the theme of developing a functional participatory
national security ecosystem and discuss the way
forward with recommendations and implementation
strategies.

The People
• The term 'people' is uniquely assigned to human beings in
general and considered a collective as citizens of a
country, members of a group.
• It refers to persons in plural or as a whole, often captured
as 'The People' from which governments act on behalf. It
identifies an entire body of the citizens of a country
(Garder, 2019).
• In concept and practice, 'the people' represents the
baseline or target for delivery of government services.

Security
• The term security drawn from the Latin word 'securus' means 'free from
anxiety or 'se = without' and 'curu = care' with wide-ranging references
www.etymonline.com
• Security is freedom from or resilience against the potential harm of persons,
groups, activities, institutions, nations, other entities, phenomena, or
vulnerability to environmental forces.
• It refers to protection from threats, hostilities, absence of harm, presence of
essential goods and services, resilience against potential harm, containment,
and a state of mind. Security is also an act, system, or service provision by
the government, private companies, third sector concern, or self-help.
• Security stands for the focus of security policies, strategies, programmes, or
operations (Buzan, Waever, and Wilde, 1998; Gee, 2016)

Ecosystem
• The term ecosystem originates from applications for vegetational
concepts which consider organisms as the baseline for habitat factors
of the environment seen in a wider sense as basic units of nature.
• It is the totality of surrounding conditions in which things exist,
function, and interact in state of affairs, situation, or geopolitical setup
often deployed as ambiance, background, circumstances, context,
domain, milieu, scope, setting, or sphere in the analysis.
• These applications expand to depict people and systems as ecosystem
processes are also seen in computer science where applications and
programmes are built into interactive baselines called clouds.

People’s Security Ecosystem
• A people's security ecosystem also known as 'national security
ecosystem' would be for all, by all, and of all, as consonance to
the current democratic dispensation.
• A new approach based on individual or group predisposition
called habitus views "… thinking and behaviour result of
cognitive structure developed historically in endless interactions
between human behavior and social structures and given social
field …" (Shimoni, 2019:2).
• An example of a people's security is the Indonesian Badan
Keamanan Rakyat or 'people's security agency' established in
1945 with the task of maintaining security by mobilising the
people.

National Security
• The modern concepts of national security emerged in the seventeenth
century from the thirty-years’ War in Europe, the English civil war, and
the Peace of Westphalia (Holmes, 2015).
• The idea of nation-state and sovereignty was thus subjected to national
security structure and management (Mbachu, 2020).
• The nation is the dominant geopolitical format of modern human societies
with the principle that people or citizens are better served if the national
environment is peaceful.
• National security is the aggregate of all other forms of securities ascribed
to human, environmental, social, economic, food, and a host of other
aspects of human affairs organised into national security structure or
architecture.

National Security Architecture
• A national security architecture is an umbrella, or designated oversight
structure, for the management, decision making, and institutional aspect of
national security functions and processes by way of national policies,
strategies, and plans (Bearne et al, 2005).
• The national security architecture comprises of associated councils,
ministries, departments, and agencies (MDAs) charged with security-related
functions and service delivery.
• Mbachu (2020) explains that security agencies within a country's national
security architecture are formed to organise society to confront the
challenges of insecurity.
• The Nigerian national security architecture consists of not only designated
government MDAs directly concerned with security issues but all other
public, private and third sector stakeholders under purview.

Challenging Environment
• As security challenges permeate and spread in all forms and
directions premise is set as the level of security service delivery is
directly related to the existence of risk, and impact, of security
threats at all levels.
• A people's security ecosystem is sourced, built, and sustained
entirely on the human terrain of population, habitat, identity,
beliefs, culture, socio-economic factors, political affairs, and
national psyche.
• The challenges encountered in the security management of these
complex factors is what will constitute 'a challenging environment'
for 'developing a people's security ecosystem'

UNDERSTANDING
PEOPLE’S SECURITY ECOSYSTEM

People as Basis of Society
• The famous opening lines of Section 14 (b) of the 1999 Constitution of the
Federal unequivocally state that "The security and welfare of the people
shall be the primary purpose of government". In theory, all nations or
states claim to govern in the name or on behalf of the people.
• In planning, policy formulation, strategy making, programmes, and
projects, the claim is always 'for the people’.
• Political scientists bestow real sovereignty to the people identified as the
entire body of the citizens of jurisdiction with pollical power (Black, 1981).
• In a systematic approach to the management of public affairs, group
dynamics serve as a lens for understanding processes like a people's
security ecosystem.

The Adhocracy Formula
• A people's security ecosystem is a form of group dynamics involving
how people, activities, institutions or agencies, and other
components of an environment interact in a system approach in the
management of security issues.
• Adhocracy cuts across stagnated bureaucracy to utilise
opportunities solves problems and gets results in a chaotic and
accelerated change with the ability to adjust and adapt (Waterman,
Jnr.;1990).
• The adhocracy formula is inclusive with emphasis on individual
initiative, community-based, and task-focused in contrast to the
existing bureaucratic 'national security architecture' based on
defined rules, set hierarchy, and often too exclusive.

Understanding the People's Security Ecosystem
An ideal people-oriented security system or a people's security ecosystem is
described as follows:
“… the point where, the rural policing system, the over 7,000 formation
units, and the entire Police formation will become one web of information
gathering for DSS, national defence, and even the National Bureau of
Statistics on a range of needed information even beyond crime … The
civil-police relationship should be built on mutual allegiance to
community security and safety which will create an ambient working
relationship that will make the street unlivable for criminals any longer."
(Medaner, 2021:1)

Available Structure on the Ground
• With over 7000 police formations working with community policing
outfits across Nigeria there is adequate structures, policies, strategies
programmes, and processes already on the ground (Medaner, 2021).
• However, there are equally neglected ministries, departments, agencies at
various levels of responsibilities.
• Issues of corruption and mismanagement, incompetence, interagency
rivalries, and undue political interference are among the key
impediments to government service delivery in general.
• An assessment of the challenges hindering the development of a people's
security ecosystem covers the nature of the people, human mind, national
psyche, value system, the environment, and organisation of security
service delivery.

AN ASSESSMENT
OF THE
CHALLENGING ENVIRONMENT

Nature of 'The People'
• The People consists of natural individual persons as male, female,
young and old called citizens organised in groups of families,
communities, local areas, states, provinces, zones, regions nations
and global contents of humanity as a whole.
• People are culturally categorised into creeds of beliefs, colours of
skin, areas of homes, ethnicities of tribes, loyalties of nations,
advantages of groups, and political ideologies all for control.
• People are competitively formed into professional bodies,
associations, CSOs, NGOs, FBOs, and CBOs for the sake of
interventions in the affairs of the larger human society.

Nature of the Human Mind
• One of the most neglected aspects of human behaviour
and people's control is the human mind.
• It is routinely utilised in the design, branding,
production, launching, promotion, and massive
distribution of products through advertisement and
marketing strategies.
• The human mind is cajoled to vote for political
leadership through election campaigns, it is constantly
harassed with threats for submission, divided to be
conquered and ruled, and even terrorized by violent
crimes.

A Weakened National Psyche
• The 'collective mind' of a nation or 'national psyche' represents the
psychological platform from which social, economic, and political
activities are mobilised for the management of national affairs,
including the outcomes and consequences of doing so.
• The Nigerian national psyche portends weakened integration as
individuals, cultural groups, sections, and creeds are set against each
other for social, economic, and political control and manipulation in
gullible exposition.
• Gullibility here is the failure of social intelligence in which a person
or group is easily tricked or manipulated into rash thinking or
course of action.

Nature of the Land
• Imagine taking a day trip to Abuja from Jos going to the left at the
forest through Akwanga to Keffi and Abuja, and you return through
Bede to Gidan Waya to the forest.
• Have you ever thought of what lies in the middle of the large circle of
roads you took just on a one-day trip?
• There are trees, forests, rivers, hills, mountains, and people doing their
things.
• This is a 'hard-to-reach' or ungoverned space like most of the Nigeria
we know and deal with is not too far from the roads we drive through.
• Will the activities of these people and places impact us especially in
terms of the security challenges we are now facing?

A Challenging Security Environment of the Past
A challenging security environment of the past was captured in a report of
more than 100 years ago in 1910, and it is still the same in 2021:
"… The Kwolla District is in Muri Province, in the Protectorate of
Northern Nigeria, the position of its centre being roughly lat. 9° 15' N.,
long. 10° 34' W … The whole countryside is dotted with compounds, each
isolated, with a small patch of farm around it … There does not appear to
be any tradition of authority or any appreciation of the meaning thereof
amongst these people. Each man does as seem best to himself and is
responsible only to such of his neighbours as may be stronger than he. All
crimes and torts are personal, and the aggrieved party gets satisfaction
for himself from the evildoer, if he can. There does not appear to be any
communal action in respect to crime …" (Fitzpatrick, 1910:16-52)

Ignorant of Geography, History, and the People
• We are drifting backward fast in time to more than 100 years
in terms of People's Security as the Government has since lost
the sense of organisation in terms of security service delivery.
• Criminals freely roaming the land murdering, raping, and
pillaging the nation.
• They are called terrorists, bandits, insurgents, rustlers,
fundamentalists, militants, herders, Fulanis, name it.
• Fundamentally, we are unable to properly define our common
enemies, and their operation mode, in the first place.

A Challenging Security Environment of the Present
• As various security agencies operate under a highly
bureaucratic national security architecture, competition
for attention, resources, and professional relevance
become the order of the day.
• The populace is primed to self-divide in fragmented
loyalty thus gullible for manipulation.
• The Nigerian security situation is collapsing into its lungs
and gasping for revitalization.

Institutional and Policy Instruments
• The 72nd Regular Session of the UN General Assembly (UNGA 72)
has its theme on 'Focusing on People: Striving for Peace and a
Decent Life for All on a Sustainable Planet' http://sdg.iisd.org/ .
• The NIPSS National Security Threat Perception Report 2018 also
concludes that "… the management of security threats should be
handled by governments at all levels, security and law enforcement
agencies, corporate groups such as CSOs, NGOs, FBOs, and CBOs,
as well as individuals …" (National Institute, 2018:193).
• The focus on people is the fundamental aspect in the management of
security service delivery involving people's contribution as well as
participation in support of efforts by relevant MDAs as spelled out
by Nigeria's national security strategy.

Nigeria's National Security Strategy 2019
• Nigeria's National Security Strategy (NSS) 2019 aims "to guide,
organise, and harmonise national security policies and efforts as it
identifies key security issues and assigned approach, roles and
responsibilities to government, civil society, private agencies and
individuals in addressing them.
• It has the vision "to make Nigeria a secure, safe, just, peaceful,
prosperous and strong nation" and the mission "to apply all
elements of national power to ensure physical and human security.
• It emphasises a just society, peaceful co-existence, national unity,
prosperity, and sustainable development while promoting
Nigeria's influence in regional, continental, and global affairs
(Onuoha and Ogbonanya, 2020).

Issues Arising
• The development of a people's security ecosystem in Nigeria's challenging
environment must consider the re-organisation of the national security
architecture for expansion and accommodation of the citizens as part of a
systemic approach to the national security management process.
• The NSS-19 will require effective synergy among relevant MDAs directly
charged with security service delivery as well as collaboration, cooperation,
and coordination with the ever-expanding stakeholder realm, including the
people in general.
• Additionally, MDAs in the field of information management, communication
control, education, re-orientation, socio-economic activities, community
development, and cultural groups must be reawakened and reabsorb in the
mainstream activities directly associated with national security management.
• The intensity, level, and spread of violent crimes including the scale at which
lives, properties, sufferings, losses, and trauma to the victims require the Laws
of the Land to redefine such pandemic as a crime against the State with its
corresponding capital sanctions.

The Human Terrain Potentials
• The natural potentials of the human terrain mostly neglected
and abandoned could be the salvation in search of ways to
rebuild society in the face of mounting threats to safety,
security, peace, and national development.
• Community service supported by a virile community
governance in an inclusive community development process
will be able to project existing institutional and policy
instruments
• Such programmes as community service across age and
gender, civic duties and reorganisation, compulsory military
and paramilitary service, and value re-orientation are critical
on the way forward.

Self-Help and Security Entrepreneurship
• As communities are left in their near and remote, the first-line
response to security threats revolves around self-help efforts
ranging from tactical retreat away from danger to any necessary
response for survival.
• Available security professionals that out of service on retirement
also bear the natural responsibility to create and offer services to
individuals, groups, communities, and the government.
• If security agencies could engage civilian task force and vigilantes
at the tactical level to combat the enemy and seek the services of
experts for strategic advice, there is no reason not to deploy
volunteer or private efforts in fighting all forms of crime
including insurgency, terrorism, banditry, kidnapping or
cybercrime.

The Community Policing Programme
• Community policing promotes organizational modeling and strategies
in support of the systematic use of partnerships and problem-solving
techniques to proactively address the immediate conditions that give
rise to public safety and insecurity at the grassroots.
• The recently launched community policing programme (CPP) provides
the required base or platform for a people's security ecosystem in
Nigeria by its inclusive grassroots application and universal
engagement.
• The CPP is based on proactive rather than reactive measures principled
on partnership and decentralization of powers for effective crime-
fighting involving the community in crime-fighting (Kpae and Eric, 2017).
• Thus, the CPP in Nigeria assembles and delivers the aspects of a
people's security ecosystem.

Summary
• The paper discusses the topic of developing an adhocratic
people's security ecosystem in a challenging environment
as centrifugal to the existing bureaucratic national
security architecture.
• A system approach to the management process provides
the theoretical framework on which conceptual
clarifications, understanding, and assessment of
developing a people's security ecosystem in Nigeria's
challenging environment produce a way forward.

Conclusion
• The paper concludes that the idea of a people's security ecosystem does not
necessarily require a full-scale physical mobilisation, training, and equipping
the people as part of the nation's security structure, but rather a process of
re-organising the people to participate and contribute to such efforts.
• Similarly, the prospect of developing a functional participatory national
security ecosystem is equally suggestive of a people-oriented approach to
security service delivery seen in the principles of the community policing
programme in Nigeria.
• These two aspects are compatible with the principle of constructive
engagement with the larger society aiming at problem-solving associated with
the Alumni Association of the National Defence College (AANDEC), Nigeria.
• A people-based participatory model of 'national security ecosystem' would be
an adhocratic enhancement to the bureaucratically blitzed national security
architecture model of security service delivery in Nigeria..

Recommendations and Implementation Strategies
Given the foregone conclusions, the paper submits the
following five recommendations and their respective
implementation strategies:

Recommendation 1:
The reorganisation of the existing national security architecture to expand
and transform into a people-centered national security ecosystem
Implementation Strategies:
i. All security-based agencies to focus on their specific areas of
responsibilities and specialisation, in a symbiotic relationship with one
another
ii. All other supporting MDAs of government, private and corporate
stakeholders to work hand-in-hand with each other for national
common goals.
iii.The Office of the National Security Adviser considers and sustains this
transformation as its key schedule.

Recommendation 2:
The reorganisation of the entire government structure and processes of
public service delivery to be people-centered at the grassroots
i. All government MDAs to charged and monitored on strictly
productive service delivery to the community levels.
ii. All communities in Nigeria to be catalogued, reorganised, and
be empowered to benefit from government service delivery.
iii.Community-level governance to be encouraged in aid of a
people's direct participation in government activities.

Recommendation 3:
The organised private and third sector efforts be attracted into security service
delivery at tactical, operational, and strategic levels
i. Security entrepreneurship to be given special considerations in security
operations at all levels.
ii. Retired security professionals to be encouraged to take up private security
service beyond the general practice of running security guard outfits.
iii.Government to approve the formation of private and self-help detective
firms, cybersecurity squads, private armies, bounty hunters, possesses,
crime busters, vigilantes, and traditional rulers in fighting crimes and
insecurity.

Recommendation 4:
Remodeling of existing communities to fit into the new dispensation for
effective participation in security service delivery and social services
i. Compulsory community service and participatory activities for all
categories of citizens
ii. Compulsory military and para-military service for selected age and
education categories.
iii.Compulsory training, social skills, local area knowledge, explorer
clubs, and community projects for all.

Recommendation 5:
Institutional and legal reforms in aid of security sector reorganisation at all levels
of government activities including people's participation in the new national
security ecosystem.
i. Pandemic and systemic crimes to be categorised as serious crimes
against the State for maximum allocation of resources, speedy justice
process, and severe sanctions.
ii. Security agencies and associated service to be expanded into an adequate
network coverage across the country
iii.The recently launched community policing programme to be expanded,
equipped, and managed as the key platform for security reform and
service delivery to the people.

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