On 26^th October 2022, Prof Evans Osabuohien delivered a presentation titled ‘Security Risk Management: Driving Down the Costs’, at the 5^th Annual Security Executive Converge held in Lagos, Nigeria.

The event with the theme ‘Building Executives’ Capacity in Security Coordination and Management for Protection of Lives and Critical Assets of National Interests’ was organised by the Institute of Security and Strategic Studies, Abuja. The participants were security executives drawn from public, private and international agencies including the Police Service Commission (PSC), Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), among others.

In his presentation, Prof Evans Osabuohien noted that with economic modernisation and globalisation, the concept of security has expanded tremendously. As such, economic advancement and security improvement should go in pari-passu. Also, security risk management should entail ongoing processes of identifying security risks and putting in place intentional and pragmatic measures for tackling them, he emphasised.

Prof Evans Osabuohien accentuated that security risk management comprises a system of people, processes and technology (PPT), which enables an organisation (private or public) to operate in line with shared values and risks.  In discussing ways of mitigating the cost of security risk management, he engaged the audience on the need to make it people-oriented by ensuring that persons in an organisation (from the least staff to the top executive) should be meant to have ‘a say and a stake’. Thus, they would see the issue of security risk management ‘as our duty’. In this wise, security risk management should be the responsibility of everyone in the organisation from being observant to reporting any possible security threat. Other suggestions that he noted on how to mitigate security risk management costs include a harmonious relationship with the immediate community (stakeholders) and the use of technology.

He concluded with the saying that everyone ‘can see something, can say something and can do something’, which later became the somewhat slogan of the participants at the Converge.

The presentation is freely available online.