El-Rufai advocates women’s involvement in fight against terrorism, extremism
Wife of the Governor of Kaduna state, Hajia Asia El-Rufai, has called for active involvement of women in the fight against terrorism and violent extremism in the country.
El-Rufai made the call at the opening of the second leadership in counter -terrorism and violent extremism course of the Nigerian Army Resource Centre (NARC) on Monday in Abuja.
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NARC is running the four-day course in collaboration with Peace Building Development Consult (PBDC) for military, security agencies and civil society organisations involved in counter-terrorism and extremism in Nigeria.
She said that it is important to integrate women in the security apparatus in the fight against terrorism and violent crime since they form the bulk of the victims.
El-Rufai also stated that women always have insights into the cause of violent extremism because of their closeness to the boys and men that actually get involved in extremism.
According to her, unless you involve a woman and get an insight on how her child has developed overtime, you may not be able to understand what pushes somebody to put on a bomb on his body, take his own life because he wants to send a message.
“Why would somebody do that? So, women need to be involved at all stages because one, they are the ones that day in day out are involved with the young people whether they are male or female.
“They are the ones that share during their normal interactions with one another, they hear things and when they hear these things and they don’t have avenue to inform, they may not be able to prevent anything.
“We also must effectively involve women in trainings in early warning mechanism. The child must be taught from the basic of the critical reasoning and thinking.
“Education remains the only way we can stop them from getting involved in extremism. Religious teaching should be first taught at home properly in order to discourage children from adhering to bad teachings,” she said.
El-Rufai, who is the National Coordinator of Society Against Violent Extremism (SAVE), further advocated that the various civil society organizatrions involved the fight against terrorism and violent extremism must be thoroughly trained to understand the issues.
Inspector General of Police, Mohammed Adamu, represented by the Deputy Inspector General, Mike Ogbizi, said that the leadership of the various security agencies must see the need to liaise and cooperate to effectively tackle terrorism and violent extremism.
Adamu also called for good governance at all level by providing infrastructure and create jobs for the youths in order to discourage them from getting involved in crimes.
He said that the course was imperative towards developing measures to counter the menace of terrorism and violent extremism and also called on the religious bodies to always preach message that would not provoke violence and encourage extremism.
The Director General of NARC, Maj.-Gen. Wahab Garba (rtd), disclosed that the tendency of the course was to look at how to develop the leadership capacity of the troops who are fighting the terrorists like Boko Haram.
