TODAY, we will continue with the paper I delivered at the 2019 Professional Managers’ Forum/Award Night of the Nigerian Institute of Management (Chartered), Port-Harcourt Chapter on Friday 22nd November 2019 at Atrium Event Centre, Port-Harcourt, Rivers State on Small Arms and Light Weapons Proliferation and Development Issues in the Niger-Delta: The Managers’ Perspective.
5. THE WAY OUT
Ladies and Gentlemen, the effects of this menace are already on us in more ways than one; we can no longer pretend that all is well. The whole environment is tense.
The security forces are trying their best, especially with their fancifully coded military operations like “Operation Crocodile Smile” and ‘Operation Python Dance”.
Even if the two reptiles did what the code names suggested, how much blood would have been shed? How many women would have been husband-less and son –less? Still, because the situation has not abated even with all the different types and forms of dance and smile, we would suggest additional solutions from a different angle, the professional management prism.
Fellow Professional Managers, a Manager gets things done through others.
1. As professional managers we need to harvest the views/opinions of stakeholders leveraging on the root cause analysis technique as well as employing the ‘5 whys’ philosophy. We should understand the root causes and foundation of the proliferation of weapons and arms in the first place. It is practically impossible to successfully solve a problem you have not properly diagnosed and understood.
2. Understanding the what, why and how of the problem will help us to then proffer workable solutions that are congruent with Political, Environmental, Social, Technological, Legal and Economic realities. This is pertinent because we cannot for example solve a Niger-Delta challenge with American Theoretical Postulations (ATP). We need home grown solutions that originated from concerned and affected stakeholders.
Fellow Professional Managers, I am convinced that we are all tired of this problem. Are we? Do we want a safer environment? Do we want to be able to move more freely by road, air and water? Do we want to sleep with our two eyes closed? Do we want small arms and light weapons proliferation to end? Do we want kidnapping, killings, piracy and violence to stop? Are we truly tired of the current situation?
If truly we answered yes to all the above questions and are truly tired of our security situation, the solutions I am proffering are summarised in the acronym “TIRED”, explained as follows:
• ‘T’ we owe it a duty to teach and train others to depart from the small arms and weapons mindset. We need to begin to invest in the minds of the people through seminars, workshops, conferences, visits etc. Right from Primary schools to higher institutions, we need to design programmes and events that will educate the people on the dangers of taking to the arms and weapons lifestyle. Proper teaching and training will send the right message and open the eyes of the people to the right knowledge that will enable them have different perspectives to solving their problems and different perspectives in understanding and ventilating their own views, feelings, motivations and beliefs.
• ‘I’; we should strive to influence government policies and our environments. We must go out to bring to our ethical fold those that are at the helm of affairs, to make them imbibe and practice the NIM code of conduct. We must begin to influence government policies especially on education. We need to let the government know that they cannot continue to pay lip service to the development of education. One of the factors fueling the insecurity in the region and the country is the lack of relevant quality education or lack of environmentally compliant education. As professional managers, we must begin to advise the government on why they need to fund technical and vocational education. We cannot keep quiet when specialised, entrepreneurship friendly institutions in the country are being degraded into conventional institutions. Technical institutions are now running administrative courses; this is not helping the country. We need to be able to come up with position papers on the types of curriculum that should be run in our institutions not the ones that will make our graduates eternal job seekers instead of job creators. Several multinational oil and gas companies are currently operating in the Niger-Delta region; they need more technical than administrative staff. China recently converted 600 universities to polytechnics to increase their technical, job creation capacity. Nigeria is converting Polytechnics to Universities to graduate job seekers with half baked theoretical administrative capacities. What will they administer when the jobs are nowhere to be found? Therefore, as professional managers, we need to influence government policies on education, budgeting, accountability, infrastructural development etc. Also, we owe it a duty to influence the Multinational oil companies to be socially responsible. We owe it a duty to influence the security agencies by working in collaboration with them to device creative strategies for the retrieval of small arms and light weapons. Professional Managers can influence traditional institutions by collaboratively working with them to better teach and train their subjects to know the value of ‘work’ over ‘fast’ money. And learn to pray through their work and not work through their prayers.
To be concluded next week.
Sunday Ade Bello is a multi-talented and an analytically inspired management trainer, writer and examiner. He is the CEO of WorkLife Training Professionals, Lagos.
