The Mustapha Akanbi Foundation, in collaboration with the Ma'asalam Islamic Foundation (MIF), hosted a high-level security summit in Ilorin on Sunday to address the rising challenges of insecurity in Kwara State and Nigeria at large.

During the session, Dr. Akanni Waliyu Oladotun, the Coordinating Head of the Department of Social Justice and Security Studies at Kwara State University (KWASU), Malete, delivered a keynote presentation titled: "Preserving the State of Harmony: Reclaiming the Kwara Identity in an Era of Prevalent Insecurity in Nigeria."

Dr. Oladotun emphasized that Kwara's unique geographical position sharing borders with the Benin Republic and several Nigerian states makes it vulnerable to the movement of non-state actors through unofficial routes. To counter this, he called for the immediate establishment of Border Community Peace Committees to monitor these porous areas and provide early warning signals.

The scholar argued that the "State of Harmony" cannot be maintained through reactive policing alone. Instead, he advocated for a move toward "proactive preservation" through a tripartite alliance involving the state government, traditional institutions, and the general citizenry.

"The State of Harmony cannot be defended solely by the government," Oladotun maintained. He stressed that a collaborative approach is the only way to reclaim the state's peaceful identity and ensure the long-term sustainability of coexistence among its diverse residents.

He mentioned reinvigoration of grassroots intelligence, institutionalising the "harmony fund", securing the "green walls", youth inoculation from "idle hands" to "vanguards" and digital resilience as some of the solutions to security challenges in the state.

For his part, the vice chairman of the Nigeria Union of Teachers (NUT), Kwara State chapter, Comrade Idris Danmaigoro, described security as the foundation of national development, adding that without security, there can be no meaningful progress in education, economy, health, or social harmony.

He identified injustice and leadership failure, poor access to education, corruption and unemployment, wrong educational policy, poverty and inequality, weak institutions and poor governance and ethnic and religious manipulation as some of the causes of insecurity in the country.

The chairman of the occasion and vice chancellor of Kwara State University, Malete, Prof. Shaykh-Luqman Jimoh, described the programme as timely and apt in view of the present security challenges in the country.

Represented by the director, Centre for Artificial Intelligence in the University, Dr Waheed Musa, Jimoh said KWASU was committed to collaborations that would ensure peaceful coexistence in the country and Kwara in particular.

On behalf of the Mustapha Akanbi Foundation (MAF) and the Massalam Islamic Foundation (MIF), Mallam Mudadhir and Mallam Toyin Ally, respectively, said the public lecture was jointly organised to follow in the footsteps of the founder of the two foundations, the late Justice Mustapha Akanbi, as a way of contributing their quota to stem the rising wave of insecurity in the country.