The presidential candidate of the National Rescue Movement, Felix Osakwe, has mulled dialogue with non-state actors in solving the nation’s security challenges if elected into office in the 2023 presidential elections.
Osakwe, who spoke as a guest on Sunrise Daily, Channels Television’s breakfast show on Monday, said he also planned to involve retired police officers.
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“It is one of the options,” he said in response to a question on whether dialoguing with non-state actors will help tackle insecurity.
“Even in the international community, there is always a time the President of America will ask for dialogue to some extent.”
Nigeria is bedeviled by a series of security threats like insurgency in the North-East, banditry in the North-West and North-Central states, separatists in the North-East, and militancy in the South-South, amongst others.
As part of solving the myriads of security challenges, the presidential hopeful did not rule out the possibility of state police.
Besides the dialogue, he said his administration will create community police and engage the youths in manning the nation’s vast forest reserves.
“We are talking about the security of Nigeria. The youths in our community, we are going to bring them on board and empower them and allow them to be able to police their community.
“After training them, any one of them can go so that we can be able to police our forests (because) that is where the Boko Haram are camping.”
