Nigeria and Africa must devise home-grown and people-centred strategies, as well as collaborate for an enhanced security ecosystem to fight insecurity on the continent, and free it from terrorism and banditry.

This formed the opinions of participants at the 2025 Sub-Saharan Africa Security Conference (SASCON) in Lagos, yesterday, with the theme: “Strategic Approaches to Security in Complex Africa.”

The stakeholders agreed that collaboration and intelligence-driven approaches would drive achievement of a safer continent. The host and Chairman for ASIS Lagos Chapter 206, Mr. Adedeji Oduba, acknowledged that Nigeria has peculiar security challenges, noting that the whole essence of the conference is to dissect and identify those visible and hidden parts, and proffer sustainable solutions.

He emphasised that the issue of national security should not be left alone in the hands of law enforcement agencies, charging all stakeholders to fully participate in the process.

Oduba said: “We all know that Nigeria and by extension, Africa, have a lot of challenges in terms of security. If I want to narrow down to Nigeria, where everyone of us can attest to, every part of the country has peculiar challenges, so we have thought of bringing this conference to Nigeria, gathering all security professionals in Nigeria to address different security challenges across the country that make up the Sub-Saharan regions.” He said besides the discussions, the vision of the conference was to ensure implementation of its recommendations at the national level.

In his goodwill message, Nigeria’s Chief of Defence Staff, General Christopher Musa, who was represented by Rear Admiral S.T Ibrahim, emphasised the need for collaboration towards surmounting the security challenges in Africa.

Similarly, the Chief of the Naval Staff, Vice Admiral Emmanuel Ogalla, appreciated the organisers, stressing that it was a way of showing that the issue of security is of paramount importance to all stakeholders.

In his remarks, President of ASIS International, Mr. Joe Olivarez, maintained that one of the strategies to address insecurity is to break down barriers to solving the problems around the world.