#Realnews4thAnniversaryLecture, BREAKING NEWS, Featured
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ALEX Cummings, presidential hopeful, Liberia, and former chief executive officer, Coca Cola, Africa, who was a discussant at the Realnews Fourth Anniversary Lecture on “Security and National Development in a Plural Democratic Society”, states that national security starts with economic security
I WISH to use this opportunity to appreciate Maureen Chigbo and Realnews for inviting me to be part of this discussion today. I will not be fair if I fail to appreciate the presence of the Liberia ambassador to Nigeria, who is present here, I’m happy you are here today. I’m talking about security and national security. But to me national security starts with economic security.
I believe that without economic security national security will never be. When we have a situation of very high unemployed men and women, when people don’t have something to protect, something to believe in, they are very susceptible to violence, to ideologies that are not conducive to their values. So, unless we proactively, aggressively and systematically address the issues of economic security, national security will not be dealt with properly.
So our priorities as we think about economic security is one that surround job creation, creating jobs for millions of young people who are unemployed and underemployed. We will do that by providing vocational training, addressing infrastructure, by refocusing on opportunities to create jobs, teachers training, all of these things will help us address the issues of security.
Of course, infrastructure is one critical way of providing national security. Refocusing on infrastructure will create jobs and ensure national security. In the context of Nigeria, government has to focus on jobs creation, government should not budget more than they have and tackle the issues of corruption systematically because we can redeploy the stolen money into priorities or pressed economic challenges, that the people of Nigeria will have something to protect so that they will not be susceptible to violence.
So that is on the preventive side. When I think about the reactive side of national security, then I think of police and adequate training of police officers. We need to think about training and retraining of our military. We have to think about regional collaboration with our neighbours in the region. With all these things, I believe that we are being more reactive to the challenges of national security. Sometimes, we think about security that it’s paramount to our people and investors but I believe with focusing on national security, we will able to provide security for our people.
Let me end by saying that I appreciate the people of Nigeria for their support to Liberia when they had civil war and civil crisis, from the creation and leadership of ECOMOG. I was having an interview before the session began and a reporter asked that Nigeria are not acknowledged for the roles they played in civil crises in Africa and my reaction to him was that in the life of families and organisations, you may not be recognised for the duties you do but today I’m thanking Nigeria and leaders in Nigeria for the role they played during the war.
Being the text of speech of Alex Cummings, presidential hopeful, Liberia, and former chief executive officer, Coca Cola, Africa, who was a discussant at the Realnews Fourth Anniversary Lecture on “Security and National Development in a Plural Democratic Society”, states that national security starts with economic security
— Nov 28, 2016 @ 01:00 GMT
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