Media Advocacy on Security in the South Eastern Nigeria: A Critical Discourse

Abstract

Every society needs security and order to enable a meaningful development. The security situation in the South-East region of Nigeria in the last three years has been worrisome. It is adversely affecting the fragile economy of the region where over 80% of the people are daily income earners. This has been the issues for public discussion, political debates on treats to the corporate existence of the Nigerian state. Hence this paper on security advocacy in the South Eastern Nigeria examines the issues, causes, challenges and media role in tackling the security situation. The agenda setting theory was used to guide the work. Data were sourced from secondary sources using the Internet and library. This paper is of the opinion that application of contingency approach in managing security situation in the South Eastern region will lead to developing security alternates that will create mutual relationship between the communities and progressively position the region in deploying optimal combination of resources both at the local and state levels of government defensively for the future.  The study recommends that since the predominant concerns of security strategies have changed, there is also a more fundamental need to rethink the weak framework of state security apparatuses in the region to include a combined human-centered security network.