Following the poor state of security in Nigeria, many Nigerians believe that the country is not secure. The public opinion poll on security, conducted recently and released on Tuesday in Abuja by Nigeria’s leading survey and polling, NOIPolls revealed that 65 per cent of Nigerians believe that the country is not secure.
The report said that the North-East (55 per cent) accounted for the highest proportion of Nigerians with a negative perception of security.
“These findings are not surprising considering the rising spate of violent extremism over the years, which have been a major source of insecurity especially in the North-East,” the report said.
The poll, which also sought to measure the perception of respondents on peculiar security challenges they are facing in their immediate environment and findings revealed that ‘‘armed robbery” (25 percent), ‘’herdsmen/farmers clashes” (14 percent) and ‘’kidnapping” (8 percent) as the top three security challenges in Nigeria.
According to the report, while the armed robbery was mostly lamented by respondents in the South-East zone (38 percent), respondents in the North-East zone (48 percent) indicated Boko-Haram as the major security threat they are facing.
It added that respondents in the North-Central (33 percent) did not hesitate to mention “herdsmen/farmers clashes” given the high occurrence of these clashes in this zone.
“Furthermore, since security is a critical component of governance and development, it was pertinent to ascertain the perception of Nigerians on the presence of security operatives nationwide and the poll showed that only 23 percent of Nigerians nationwide indicated that they ‘’always” notice the presence of security operatives in their immediate environment as opposed to 33 percent who indicated ‘sometimes’,” the report said.
It, however, noted these were the key highlights from the national security poll recently conducted in May this year.
