Governor Kayode Fayemi on Wednesday said Nigerians have failed their task of nation-building by clinging to their ethnic and religious beliefs, a situation which he said is worse than the banditry and herdsmen crisis.

The Ekiti governor was a guest at a Zoom conference where he addressed the topic: “Nigeria’s National Security Challenges: Setting the Agenda for Legislation.”

He said Nigerians have focused on their religious and ethnic beliefs rather than the “fundamental issues of citizenship and ownership of the nation,” Sahara Reporters said.

This, according to the governor, constitutes a more critical challenge to national cohesion than the Boko Haram insurgency, banditry attacks and rising cases of kidnappings across the country.

Mr Fayemi, who doubles as the chairman of the Nigeria Governors’ Forum, maintained that the issue of security can be tackled only when each state is allowed to have their own police, like developed countries.

He said, “The constitutional arrangement should be addressed to reduce the items on the exclusive list which security is one of them. We have to devolve the security of the nation.

“Overcentralisation of security cannot solve this problem. We need a multi-level security arrangement in the state and local communities.

“All over the European countries like Canada, Australia, Britain and the rest, communities handle their security system and are accountable to the central police.”

While noting that the governors’ forum seeks to promote the interest of Nigerians, Mr Fayemi said it has “an unfinished nation-building project in our hand.”

“People tend to respond and have gone to their ethnic and religious shells more than focusing on the fundamental issues of citizenship and ownership of the nation.

“The trajectory of the challenges we are confronting is not the Boko Haram in the North-East, the banditry in the North-East, the herders in the Middle-Belt or the kidnapping cases in the South-West and South-East,” he noted.

“It is rather about our failure to reflect on the project of nation-building. I’m not saying those problems are not with us, but there are issues between the government and the people.

“It is an elite concern that our greatest challenge lies in the fact that we don’t know what it means to be Nigerians,” Mr Fayemi added.

Nigeria has seen an uptick in partisan ethnic and religious sentiments since President Muhammadu Buhari assumed office in 2015. The Nigerian leader has disregarded the spirit of national unity by favouring his northern region in filling federal positions or approving economic palliatives, a controversial policy that has drawn widespread criticism and stoked divisions from other sections of the country.