Former Ekiti State Governor Kayode Fayemi has linked banditry, insurgency and other forms of insecurity in Nigeria to leadership and structural problems confronting the country.
Fayemi said Nigeria would become a country of significance when its leadership and structural problems are addressed.
Speaking on ARISE News’ Prime Time on Monday night, the former governor said the country must first define its national vision and interests to effectively address its challenges.
“It’s a leadership problem and a structural problem because the structure would enable us to return to that question of what vision is the country promoting, what’s our national interest?
“In order to develop a grand strategy, in our studies of foreign relations and diplomacy, we always talk about grand strategy. What’s the country’s grand strategy?
“You don’t arrive at a grand strategy without defining what your national interest is, depending on how many they are, and you can’t arrive at your national interest if you don’t have a clear idea of the Nigeria we want.
“What is that Nigeria that we want? What is the national objective? What drives how we then respond by way of our diplomatic assets?
“That’s not a settled question, sadly, and whatever is happening by way of insurgency, banditry, insecurity is also a consequence of that unsettled national question.
“You can add other things to it like leadership problems, poverty, inequality, you name it, but unless we settle the question of what is this country called Nigeria? What does it mean to its citizens?” Fayemi said.
