To address the current challenges to national unity and stability, stakeholders advised that governments at all levels have to engage with agitators, provide platforms for mutual  understanding and build consensus and agreements for resolving the challenges.

The stakeholders at a seminar  organised by the Department of State Services against the backdrop of the upsurge in ethnic and regional agitations for restructuring, self-determination, regional autonomy and secession also maintained that Nigeria has greater potentials and possibilities and is stronger together as a united nation.

The communique from the Seminar hinged on National Unity and Stability due to heightening cleavages and divisions, subjecting the polity to intense pressures and stress and creating fear and anxiety among citizens.

The seminar was attended by distinguished personalities and groups, including eminent traditional leaders, former and present top political leaders, academics, civil society organizations, labour, personnel of the military, paramilitary, security and strategic institutions, students, National youth corps members, and other youth groups.

According to the communiqué , good governance and visionary leadership would reduce citizen frustration, create sense of belonging and improve patriotism and contentment.

Therefore , Nigeria has to muster the political will that is necessary to manage the issues that question or threaten national unity, cohesion and integration.

Underscoring the issue of moral character, ethics, attitudes, orientations and democratic tenets of self-restraint, tolerance and accommodation in the political class, elite and wider society , citizens were called upon to be more responsive and participatory in matters of security as well as hold people in authority to account.

The communique pointed out that while rewarding production, there is need to focus more on revenue generation rather than sharing.

“The states and LGs have to be more innovative in resource mobilization. There is need to review the issue of the productive, judicious and efficient use of allocated resources.”

“Federalism is threatened by rent seeking, unproductive behaviour, inefficiency in governments and revenue generation efforts, non-viability of states and local governments, high cost structure of governance, the unproductive basis of revenue sharing, growing inequality between resource endowed and non-endowed states which is incompatible with national unity and equality. “

The DSS however was commended for organising the seminar because of its usefulness and appropriateness in highlighting strategies for enhancing national unity and stability.