The meeting or conference might grant the Moslem states the right to demolish Christian churches and to prevent the erection of new ones. But there, it must also grant the Christian states similar rights, to uproot existing mosques and abolish the construction of new ones in their own areas.

For what is good for the goose is good for the gander! It must have to deal with issues of political intolerance and ethnocentrism that are largely responsible for the Jos mayhem and such other latent acrimony between indigenes and settler-communities around the country.

The Niger Delta face-off has to be addressed, among other serious grievances that are tearing the country asunder, including the issue of over-centralisation of power in Nigeria. In the end, we have to create a people-based Constitution to replace the discredited 1999 Constitution. It is incumbent on the Jonathan government to convoke a national conference, now!

On the other hand, a worthy priority for our intelligence services should be in the mapping of the links between the insurgency in the Maghreb, that in the Horn of Africa and the emergent strain in Nigeria as well as those connected with other flashpoints in the country.

Boko Haram is using guerilla tactics. Lethal or naked force is insufficient when the enemy is shapeless, amorphous and invisible. Adequate intelligence is required to map Boko Haram’s hierarchy, its channels of financing and weapons acquisitions, and its network of financiers and political sponsors both local and foreign-based; ditto for the other hot spots in the country.

To that extent, our attention must also be directed at Nigeria’s critical outside, especially influences from Niger Republic, Chad, Cameroon and even Somalia from which Boko Haram seems to be getting logistic support, armament, manpower, training and tactics.

The question is: How attuned are the relevant institutions, particularly, the National Intelligence Agency, NIA, to the complexions of these security tasks and risks?

The National Intelligence Agency, NIA, was created by the Babangida regime, which correctly perceived at the time that Nigeria had grown away from its simple and innocent circumstances, which focused security concerns almost exclusively on internal dissension; military putsches, the civil war, etc, and reckoned that Nigeria’s new interests and concerns warranted a foreign service presence and capability that could no longer be satisfactorily served by a ‘Research Department’ that was integral to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, MFA.

The NIA is charged with the responsibility for the general maintenance of the security of Nigeria outside Nigeria concerning matters that are not related to military issues. Thus, right at its inception, the functions allotted to the agency entrenched it as the sword and shield of the Republic, its first line of defence and weapon of first resort in the promotion of our vital national interests. Unfortunately, the NIA’s performance falls far short of the spirit and letter of its statutory mandate. Measured against the demands of its role, the agency has been grossly ineffective. This mandate fulfilment deficit stems from the long term relegation of external security in the hierarchy of national defence priorities as well as the ineptitude of many of those that have held sway at the helm of the NIA.

Presently, it appears, the organisation’s headquarters sees itself as a perpetual Hajj committee, dispatching and returning its very meek members on pilgrimages to world capitals, where, poorly equipped in mind and heart, they are hardly able to smell a rat, let alone catch it.

From the foregoing, a number of critical imperatives are obvious. There is a need to evolve a new national security doctrine that accurately perceives the asymmetrical and globalized patterns of the threats confronting Nigeria. The new doctrine must also recognise the security risks represented by Nigeria’s critical outside.

We must also note our utter systemic unpreparedness for the perils of the current threat environment, especially, the institutional dysfunction of the National Intelligence Agency, the primary organ statutorily charged with invigilating Nigeria’s external security concerns.

The drastic and comprehensive reorganisation of this agency is now a strategic necessity. It cannot be deferred any longer.

Mr  Uchenna Nwankwo, an architect, wrote from Lagos