The North East Civil Society Forum has urged governors in the region to develop a regional peace, stabilisation and development strategy.
According to them, such development will be an approach to tackling the peculiar challenges of the region that is being ravaged by insurgency.
The forum made the call on Saturday in Maiduguri in a communique issued after a town hall meeting of civil socity organisations and other stakeholders from Adamawa, Bauchi State, Borno, Gombe State, Taraba and Yobe.
The communique signed by the forum’s chairman, Amb. Ahmed Shehu, also urged the organisations in the north east to take proactive steps in enlightening the citizens on their roles, rights and responsibilities in building sustainable peace and security.
“Citizens should be mobilised to support security agencies with first-hand and reliable information that will aid the ongoing counter insurgency operations in the region.
“It has been observed that there’s weak collaboration among security agencies operating in the region.
“We, therefore, call on the federal government to develop a national security policy and for National Assembly to facilitate the review of existing legal instruments to enhance effective inter-agency collaboration among various security agencies.
“It was observed with disappointment that the north east states have the highest rate of out of school children in the country.
“We call on the governments at the federal and state levels to judiciously invest in ducation with special emphasis on the girl-child.
“This is to mitigate the tendencies to violent extremism and to build sustainable peace in the region,” it said,” the forum observed.
The communique also urged the North East Development Commission to support respective state governments in fast tracking development in their states “by embarking on pro-poor and community driven development projects and programmes”.
It also called for more allocation on capital expenditure to the region in the federal budget that could adequately take care of the destruction by insurgents and bandits in the sub-region.
The forum further advocated a budget line for nutrition across the states to address the high rate of severe acute malnutrition in the region.(NAN)
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