The Presidential Think-Tank on Defence and Security says it has concluded arraignments to hold a National Summit on ” Protecting Nigeria’s Critical Infrastructure, Monuments and Businesses” as part of efforts to get better strategies for coordinating responses against attacks and violence.
Chairman of the Presidential Think-Tank on Defence and Security Major General Abdul Malik Jibril (rtd) who disclosed this during a pre- summit press conference in Abuja on Thursday said that the National Summit will hold from December 6 to 7, 2021 at Congress Hall of Transcorp Hilton .
The summit, he explained, is basically in response to the call -to- arms of the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, Muhammad Buhari to Armed Forces, Intelligence and Security establishments, business owners and all residents of Nigeria to work in concert on the issue of festering insecurity.
” To reducing the vulnerability of the Nation’s Critical National Infrastructure to threats and hazards ,on the one hand ,and improving the resilience of such critical national infrastructure by strengthening their ability to withstand and recover from disruption”.
General Jibril said the Think-Tank believed the country need to take a number of measures to protect the national assets such as physical protection to prevent damage or disruption in the event of attacks.
The country also need to build a level of reliability in its critical national assets, so that they can continue to operate even after an attack and to ensure that there are back-up system.
As well as ” putting in place organisations that can rapidly respond effectively to threat events to enable such infrastructure recover quickly from disruptions”.
General Jibril said the country must create and nurture its own strategy to protect critical national infrastructure assets such as “facilities, systems,sites, information, people, networks and processes necessary for a Country to function and upon which daily life depends.”
Such national assets that must be protected also includes some functions , sites and organisations which are not critical to the maintenance of essential services,but which need protection due to the potential dangers they could pose to the public in the event of an emergency such as ( civil nuclear and chemical sites) for example.
He said that there are some parts of the National Infrastructure system that are judged to be critical to functioning of the country . Those critical elements of infrastructure ( facilities, virtual and physical systems,sites, property, information, people,networks and processes)the loss or compromise of which would result in a major detrimental impart on the availability, delivery or integrity of essential services leading to severe economic and social consequences.
According to Jibril , the Summit is to get owners of critical National Infrastructure to network with experts. He said Prof. Niran Oluwaranti, of the Department of Computer Science & Engineering, Obafemi Awomolo University,Ile Ife, Major General Emeka Onumajuru, the Deputy Commandant National Defence College Abuja and Prof. UA Tar Head ,Centre for Defence Studies and Documentation Nigerian Defence Academy, Kaduna would speak on selected topics while ten other sub themes would be discussed and trashed out.
Major General Jibril reiterated that the Summit is necessitated by the changing World and the fact that “we are seeing agitations for all sorts of causes easily turning violent” adding that ” what these non state actors readily focus on are humans and some of these critical national assets”.
“They engage in vandalization and destruction of assets in the Oil and Gas ,Telecommunications, ICT, Maritime, Education,Railways,Banking and other resources in the Public and organized Private Sectors,” he lamented.
He said that besides the summit the Presidential Think-Tank is also in consultations with leading security experts and Institutions to develop technological options to achieve the desired peace in the country.