Nigerian Unity Schools Old Students Association (USOSA) says it will partner with the federal government to harness national diversity to improve security.
The association’s president-general, Mr Lawrence Wilbert, gave the assurance at a news conference Tuesday in Lagos.
The conference was oraganised ahead of the association’s 35th plenary scheduled for Saturday at the King’s College, Lagos.
The plenary will have the theme, “USOSA Resurgence: Harnessing Our Diversity for National Security”.
USOSA is a coalition of all the old students associations of the 104 federal government-owned secondary schools in the country.
According to Wilbert, security remains a major driver of any country’s development, while its absence will lead to underdevelopment, increased crime rate, violence, unemployment and poverty.
The president-general said that the plenary would afford representatives of old students of the colleges the opportunity to come together and deliberate on Nigeria’s challenges with emphasis on insecurity.
Wilbert said that the association was looking forward to finding solutions to the challenges and would come up with a blueprint on how it would partner with the government on how to tackle them.
He said the nation in the recent past, witnessed clamour for cessation, increased rate of insecurity as well as intolerance among the citizenry. Such situation, he said, called for concern and needed timely intervention.
“During the political campaigns, for the just-concluded elections, we saw alarming volumes of hate messages, especially via the social media and other channels that threatened to pollute the relationship of people and communities.
“Against this backdrop, therefore, it is time we need a collective counter-voice to promote the message of unity in the face of the ever-increasing negative rhetoric because the absence of such voices emboldens the agents of violence to instill fear in Nigerians.
“We want to state here that we acknowledge the efforts of governments to respond to this growing sense of uncertainty and fear, to ensure that security and welfare of citizens are intact.”
