By Olasunkanmi Akoni and David Aghaeze

Security experts, stakeholders and innovators who converged on Lagos have stressed the urgent need to devise home-grown and people-centred solutions to combat the insecurity challenges rocking the Africa continent.

The participants made the call at the 2025 Sub- Sahara Africa Security Conference, SASCON, held at Victoria Island, with the theme: “Strategic Approaches to Security in Complex Africa.”

The stakeholders agreed that collaboration and intelligence-driven security tactics would fast track the process of achieving a safer continent.

The host of the conference and Chairman for ASIS Lagos Chapter 206, Mr. Adedeji Oduba, acknowledged that Nigeria has peculiar security challenges, adding that the whole essence of the conference was to dissect and identify those visible and hidden parts and proffer sustainable solutions.

Oduba stressed d that the issue of National security should not be left alone in the hands of the law enforcement agencies.

“We all know that Nigeria and by extension, Africa have a lot of challenges in terms of security.

“If I want to narrow down to Nigeria where everyone of us can attest to, every part of the country has peculiar challenges so we have thought of bringing this conference to Nigeria, gathering all security professionals in Nigeria to address different security challenges across the country that make up the sub -Saharan regions,” he said.

Oduba added that beside the discussions, “at the end of this conference, a communique will be issued and we hope it will get to the national assembly where legislators will look at it and those enforced with ensuring security of lives and property in Nigeria.

“And if they need corporate security like us to be involved, we will be more than willing to support.”

The Nigeria’s Chief of Defence Staff, General Christopher Musa who was represented by Rear Admiral S. Ibrahim, stressed the need for collaboration towards surmounting the security challenges in Africa.

Musa acknowledged that security challenges are complex in part of Africa, stressing for concerted efforts and strategic approaches to unravel the challenges.

According to him; “Through collective wisdom and efforts, we can devise effective and sustainable solutions to the issue of insecurity in the continent of Africa.

“We need a deep understanding of the threat and that would allow us to develop innovative strategies to combat the scourge.”

Similarly, the Chief of the Naval Staff, Vice Admiral Emmanuel Ogalla, stressed that it is a way of showing that the issue of security is of paramount importance to all stakeholders and not just Nigeria but Africa as a whole.

Ogalla who was represented by Abdul- Rahman Mohammed, “Security is not just an exclusive reserve of security agencies and military services, but requires collaboration of all stakeholders.

“Seeing the dynamics and how security changes from state, interstate and to non-state actors, it becomes necessary for the continent to look inward and fashion out strategies to address these security challenges that we are facing.

“And I totally agree with the submission on the need to apply local, home-grown strategy to address our security challenges because security is a whole of government and society approach.

“The security challenges that one may face in other continent may not be the same with what we are facing here in Nigeria, so we must do a need analysis and identify what needs to be done and so, the introduction of vigilante and private guards for example serve as force multipliers and if you take example for the north east where the fight against terrorism has been on for the past 15 years, you will realise that the engagement of the vigilantes as to enhance security architecture is a welcome Idea.

“I want to believe that the more we look inward and fashion our ways of addressing our peculiar security challenges, it would be better for us. It is not a one size fits all approach, we must look at our own peculiarity and design our strategies to suit such peculiarities.”