The Civil Society Organisations alongside journalists and security operatives in Nigeria on Thursday converged on Abeokuta, Ogun State Capital to address issues on understanding and monitoring civil-military relations.
Penpushing reports that the exchange programme was organized by Friedrich Ebert Stiftung-Nigeria in partnership with the Institute for Peace and Conflict Resolution (IPCR), with participants drawn from various states.
The 3-day programme was kicked started with welcome speech by Dr Gerald Okafor of the Institute for Peace and Conflict Resolution (IPCR), who explained that civil-military relations refer to the balance and interaction between civilian authorities and armed forces
Penpushing further reports that he added that understanding and monitoring these relations is key to ensuring accountability, protecting human rights and maintaining democratic governance
The Human rights and Civil Military Relations (CMR) led discourse with relevant stakeholders, including security experts, academics, policymakers, journalists and Civil Society Organisations(CSOs).
Penpushing also reports that participants spoke on the continuous abuse of human rights by both the military and law enforcement agencies, and vice versa, as well as Human rights abuses by members of the security and armed forces which evoke deeper emotions than others due to their peculiarity with reference to both training, social, and economic dynamics, and more importantly, general social perceptions.
The workshop equally looked into the need to pay more attention to human rights and should become paramount, as well as noting the need to get civilians actively involved in civil-military operations emphasizing that, veritable means of achieving this is to get civilians actively involved in the security sector governance space.
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