The Nigeria Governors’ Forum has called on the country’s service chiefs to develop new security architecture to tackle worsening insecurity.

The NGF Chairman, Governor Kayode Fayemi of Ekiti, stated this when he briefed State House correspondents after an emergency meeting of the forum at the State House Banquet Hall.

He stated that the NGF welcomed new service chiefs’ appointments and supported the work they have promised to do.

Mr. Fayemi added, “We hope new security architecture will emerge from this new leadership as the forum would support the dedication of parts of federation accounts to the acquisition of military equipment.

“On our part, we are prepared to support the dedication of portions of the Excess Crude Account and the Natural Resource Development Fund or the Economic Stablisation Fund to providing the necessary equipment for the military and other security institutions to address, immediately, the impunity associated with all of the crimes and criminality that we have highlighted in this briefing.”

In addition, the governor said that the forum expressed an interest in strengthening Nigeria’s judicial system to accelerate access to justice for victims of crime and criminality in the country.

He said, “Some of the issues that were reviewed included, but not limited to the farmers/herders conflict, banditry and kidnapping, militancy and sea piracy, cultism, youth protests, and insurgency.

“The following recommendations firmly came out of our meeting: Governors are irrevocably committed to the protection of lives and property in our states, and we are full of sympathy with those who have lost lives and property.

“Nigerian governors also said in very clear terms, that crime and criminality should comprehensively be prosecuted wherever they may occur without ethnic, religious or any other colouration; governors are totally opposed to ethnic profiling of crime; knowing what has transpired in other parts of the world.”

He cited the ethnic profiling of Jews in Germany, which led to the Second World War, and Tutsis, which led to the genocide in Rwanda.