Minister of Defence, retired Maj.-Gen. Bashir Magashi, has urged the military and other security agencies to develop clear strategies in tackling the security challenges confronting Nigeria and West African sub-region
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Magashi made the call at the National Defence College (NDC) Security Seminar with the theme: “Emerging Security Threats in West Africa: Implications for Regional Security and Stability”, on Tuesday in Abuja.
He said that national security was key to the growth and development of nations as well as regional stability, adding that West African sub-region had been grappling with one form of security challenge or the other.
The minister said the rise in violent conflicts in West Africa had sparked concerns that emerging threats could undermine the security and stability of the sub-region.
He said a combination of factors such as youth bulge and rising unemployment as well as upsurge in terrorism had created security challenges undermining national and regional stability.
According to him, the democratic space is shrinking as more people live under fully or partially authoritarian states today than in the last two decades.
Magashi said that an increasing number of African heads of states had moved to undermine term limits to remain in power.
This, according to him, has increasingly alienated more people and has resulted to unconstitutional changes in governments in Burkina Faso, Guinea and Mali, as well as the attempted Coup d’etat in Guinea Bissau.
He said that of concern was that these coups seemed to be gathering populist support, while the ECOWAS and its member states were struggling to ensure a return to constitutional order.
“Threats from violent extremists groups, ethnic militias, organised criminal groups and even armed secessionist groups as well as other violent non-state actors have made it imperative that security agencies develop a deliberate and coherent strategic approach to surmounting these challenges.
“It is for these reasons that the seminar has become necessary to interrogate the nature and dynamics of security threats in West Africa, focusing on emerging threats and the resurgence of military coups that have threatened the region’s relative stability.
“We must, therefore, work toward ensuring the stability of the sub-region. I will like us to leverage this platform to address the security challenges facing the sub-region and make workable recommendations in this regard,” he said.
Magashi commended the effort of NDC in organising the seminar, urging participants to analyse issues that would proffer strategies in combating the emerging security threats in the West Africa sub-region as a whole, and Nigeria in particular.
The Chief of Defence Staff, Gen. Lucky Irabor, said the expected output from the seminar would in no small measure be to the overall efforts of government in ensuring security and stability in Nigeria and West Africa sub-region.
Irabor said the sub region had been witnessing an increase in the activities of non-state actors, thereby, posing threats to regional security, political stability and economic development.
He said the spread of violent extremism, cross-border banditry, and kidnapping, among others, coupled with proliferation of small arms and light weapons, had negatively alter the security landscape of West Africa.
According to him, this invariably affects the development and economic growth of member states.
The CDS urged Nigerian politicians to realise the fact that it was a necessity to have a secure state first, before vying for any elective position in the upcoming 2023 general elections.
The National Security Adviser (NSA), retired Maj.-Gen. Babagana Monguno, urged NDC to continue to examine national and international security concerns, especially along the lines that most security threats were transnational in nature.
Monguno, who was represented by Maj.-Gen. Emmanuel Mdagi, said the sub-region had of recent been grappling with a plethora of security challenges that continue to morph in scale and intensity.
He said the trend could best be described as a complex and unpredictable threat environment.
According to him, trends in the global environment indicate that a multitude of factors create major security concerns such as rapid population growth which puts tremendous pressure on states to compete for energy, water and food to support life as well as economic and societal development.
“Currently, we are facing series of terrorism and violent extremism. Others include piracy, armed banditry as well as other transnational organised crimes.
“The recent trend of unconstitutional changes in government as witnessed in Burkina Faso, Guinea, Chad and Mali are equally quite disturbing.
“Undoubtedly, all these security challenges pose varying degrees of threat to the social, economic, and political dynamics of the region,” he said.
NDC Commandant, Rear Adm. Murtala Bashir, said the seminar was being held in response to the evolving trends of insecurity in West Africa.
Bashir said the college through the engagements of its Centre for Strategic Research and Studies usually collates different contributions to be fed into security decision-making at the highest levels.
He said the immediate trigger for the seminar was the resurgence of military coups in Burkina Faso, Guinea (Conakry) and Mali as well as a botched military coup in Guinea Bissau.
According to him, it must be borne in mind that the underlying causes for these coups lie in the reduction of the democratic space and other governance deficits being experienced in many countries.
“Arguably, the security dynamics in West Africa have remained volatile since the 1990s when the region witnessed civil wars in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Cote d’Ivoire and Guinea Bissau, which also had cross-border implications.
“While ECOWAS and later the United Nations succeeded in containing the civil wars in the region, security trends in the region have assumed new dimensions since the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Centre in New York and the accompanying influx of Al Qaeda elements who have mobilised allied groups into West Africa.
“The threats of terrorism and violent extremism in the region escalated in the aftermath of the violent collapse of the Muammar Ghadaffi regime in Libya.
“The fall of Gaddafi was itself a fallout of the Arab Spring in 2011, and the spread of cells of the Islamic State to West Africa with the establishment of the Islamic State in the Greater Sahel (ISGS) and the Islamic State in West Africa Province (ISWAP),” he said.
The commandant said it was worrisome that in spite of the adoption of the ECOWAS Political Declaration and Common Position against Terrorism in 2013, terrorism had continued to escalate in the region.
He said that Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana and Togo had recently come under threats of attack which hitherto were restricted to Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger and Nigeria.
He said it was being projected that the terrorist threats in West Africa were gradually spreading toward the coastal regions which traditionally witnessed only sea robbery, piracy and various forms of illicit transnational trafficking in the Gulf of Guinea.
According to him, it is from a deep reflection on the developments in the region that the college took the initiative to hold this security seminar.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that a paper on the theme of the seminar was delivered by the Vice Chancellor, Enugu State University of Science and Technology, Prof. Aloysius Okolie.
The second paper titled, “Governance Challenges and Resurgence of Military Coups in West Africa; Implications for Democratic Stability in the Sub-Region”, was presented by Prof. Shita Oshita, a professor of Peace and Development Studies, University of Calabar. (NAN)
