The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has urged the Federal Government to adopt a research-based strategy in the fight against insurgency.
The union also identified questionable Nigeria’s social contract as a major cause of insecurity. It noted that the country’s legal foundation is shaky and its democratic credential weak, susceptible to partisanship and parochial or commercial misappropriation.
The chapter made the research option known in a public lecture and town hall meeting it held at the ASUU secretariat at the permanent site of the University of Jos.
On the theme “Exploring Radical Remedies for the Roots of Pervasive Insecurity in Contemporary Nigeria,” the union’s trustee and past ASUU Chairman, Prof. Assisi Asobie said combating pervasive insecurity is possible. However, it requires the interaction of the Nigerian working class in alliance with university-based research institutes constantly engaged with it as a pressure group using accumulated research knowledge over time.
He said: “The alliance between the working class and workers should lead to an engagement with the selected wing of the business community and state officials.
“A three-sided collaboration of workers backed by the universities, the business community and state officials will provide good bases for charting a viable strategy for addressing the identified roots of the three main sources of pervasive insecurity in Nigeria.”
Also, the former Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and Pro-Chancellor of the University of Jos, Prof. Attahiru Jega has observed that poor economy and youth unemployment are serious contributory factors.
Asobie said the relegation of Nigerian universities to the background by the government, which has resulted in persistent strike actions by lecturers, has made the citadel of learning unable to produce necessary researches to combat insecurity in the country.
He said: “Furthermore, the Nigerian state has not yet earned the monopoly of the legitimacy of the possession, control, and use of the instruments of coercion in the society.
“Moreover, the Nigerian state lacks relative autonomy; its dominant class, an alliance of indigenous middlemen or communisation agents and foreign merchants and speculative investors is not independent of social groups and their parochial interests, and criminal activities. It is, therefore, unable to enforce the law of the land against criminality.”