Participants at the maiden Annual International Public Lecture of the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abuja on Thursday, Oct. 2, 2024(NAN).
The Secretary-General of the United Nations António Guterres, once warned that: “If nothing is done, the effects of terrorism and organised crime in the Sahel region will be felt far beyond the region and the entire African continent.”
For almost two decades now, the threat posed by groups, who espouse fundamentalist religious narratives to unleash violent extremism and terrorism across the Sahel and Sub-Saharan Africa, has seemingly spiraled out of control, as was predicted by Guterres.
For instance, a recent report by Global Terrorism Index, a terrorism tracker platform, indicates that the epicentre of violent extremism and terrorism has indeed shifted out of its original stronghold in the Middle-East into the Central Sahel region, and is cascading down to coastal West Africa.
The report also says that Sub-Saharan Africa alone currently constitutes more than half of total deaths resulting from violent extremism and terrorism globally, with 50 per cent of the victims being ECOWAS citizens.
Also, according to a new study by the African Centre for Strategic Studies, acts of terror in the subregion increased by more than 100,000 per cent in the last two decades, in spite of local and foreign interventions to curb it.
The report further says that in 2023 alone, more than 23,000 people were killed in Africa — a 20 per cent increase compared to 2022.
One of the three identified “hotspots” of violent extremism and terrorism that are the strongholds of the most dreaded terrorist groups in the subregion, is the Lake Chad Basin bordered by Cameroon, Niger, and Nigeria where Bolo Haram hold sway.
Other hotspots are the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), the al Mourabitoun in the Sahel region (Mali), as well around the Horn of Africa (Kenya, Somalia, and Uganda) where the Ansar Dine, al Qaeda, and Al Shabaab hold a significant measure of influence respectively.
Diplomatic and security experts say that these extremist groups’ decisions to strengthen their ties with international jihadist networks, and declaring allegiance to them, is largely responsible for the current spike in terrorism far beyond the Sahel region.
Violent extremism and terrorism are fueled by illicit arms trade, unemployment, poverty, inadequate policing, marginalisation, political exclusion and instability.
These presently pose more dangerous challenges to national and regional security efforts to tackle.
Dealing with the monster of terrorism requires multifaceted, comprehensive and collaborative approaches, analysts say.
These must include interrogating and dealing with the root causes; deliberately promoting individual national economic developments; ensuring good governance; ending marginalisation and human rights abuses, among others.
Devising urgent, deliberate mechanisms aimed at strengthening greater regional cooperation between affected countries, as well as ensuring consistent collaborative support from international development partners are absolutely necessary.
However, a myriad of security initiatives, which seek to address the root causes of terrorism have woefully failed to fully contain the geographic footprint of violent extremists in the sub-region.
This is mainly because implementing these strategies requires sustained collaborative efforts from governments, international organisations, civil society, and local communities, which is no easy task.
It was in light of this development and the urgent need to curb the surging scourge of terrorism in Sub-Saharan Africa that the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) recently organised an Annual International Public Lecture with the theme: “Insecurity in the Sahel (2008-2014); Genesis, Impact and Lessons for Nigeria.”
The Guest Lecturer, Dr Mohamed Ibn Chambas, the pioneer ECOWAS Commission President and currently the African Union’s (AU) Chief Mediator on Sudan, enumerated the factors fueling insecurity in the Sahel region to include weak governance, corruption, as well as the Libyan and Sudanese crises.
He said that other causative factors included the vast ungoverned spaces in the zone, the drying/shrinking of the Lake Chad, and terrorism financing through the interference of external forces, who seek to exploit it for their own interests.
Chambas, who is also a former Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General and Head of the UN Office for West Africa and the Sahel (UNOWAS), said that military solution alone would not address the Sahel’s security challenges, and called for other proactive efforts to tackle them.
The expert suggested that efforts should be made by countries in the region to alleviate poverty and inequality among their citizens, saying that this was the antidote to the root causes of violent extremism and terrorism in the subregion.
He said that the issues of weak regional cooperation had further taken a toll on the subregion’s security challenges, and called for the stepping up of regional cooperation and initiatives as the panacea to the menace of terrorism.
The AU chief also urged Nigeria to cooperate with neighbouring countries to ensure joint border protection and security, which he said would go a long way to tackle the subregion’s security challenges.
“The issues of terrorism financiing and supply network should be effectively cut off or addressed.
“We see the terrorists riding hundreds of thousands of motorbikes.
“How are they getting these and the fueling?
“These are what we should interrogate,” he said.
The President of ECOWAS Commission, Dr Omar Touray, while addressing the participants, applauded Nigeria’s leadership role and efforts toward addressing the security challenges, which he said had been bedeviling the subregion for nearly two decades.
He said that the ‘dogged efforts’ of Nigeria over the years, had yielded visible results, particularly by reducing the effectiveness of Boko Haram terrorists to mere ‘rubbles and pockets’ of attacks.
Touray noted that terrorist attacks, which were initially confined to Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger in the Sahel, and Nigeria in the Lake Chad Basin, had multiplied and were spreading to West Africa’s coastal countries like Benin, Ivory Coast and Togo.
“Initially confined to certain countries in the Sahel (Mali and Niger) and the Lake Chad Basin (Nigeria), terrorist attacks have multiplied and spread to other countries (Burkina Faso) and are now a real threat to coastal countries (Benin, Côte d’Ivoire, Togo),” he said.
The commission’s president said that the transnational nature of the current threat of violent extremism and terrorism had forced member states to initiate collective collaborative actions to curb the scourge.
He said that in view of the prevailing escalating violent extremism and terrorism, West African countries’ leaders were already working on setting up a 5000-man ECOWAS Standby Force to fight against terrorism.
“On the directives of the ECOWAS Heads of State and Government, efforts are ongoing to set up a 5000-man kinetic force to fight against terrorism using the platform of the ECOWAS Standby Force,” Touray added.
Also speaking, President Bola Tinubu noted that the security challenges of the Sahel region was crucial for Nigeria’s security, stressing that Nigeria’s strategic position and large population meant that instability in the Sahel would significantly affect the country.
Represented by the National Security Adviser, Nuhu Ribadu, Tinubu said his administration had deployed a combined multifaceted approach comprising kinetic and non-kinetic strategies to tackle the threat of violent extremism and stem the tide of its ripple effects.
The President attributed the security challenges of the Sahel, which he said had contributed to the subregion’s woes, to many factors, including bad governance, climate change, food insecurity, youth unemployment and religious extremism, among others.
“The complex security challenges have deep roots in sundry causal factors, such as climate change, food insecurity and extremism, which have created a ring of violence and instability in the region,” he said.
Former Head of State and Chairman of the event, Gen. Abdulsalami Abubakar, corroborated Tinubu’s view on the root causes of the Sahel crisis, stressing that these were responsible for creating a fertile ground for insecurity to thrive in the subregion.
“In the heart of insecurity are unemployment, proliferation of small arms and light weapons, internal conflict, and environmental degradation, which create a fertile ground for insecurity in the nation and the region,” he said.
Also speaking, the Chief of Defence Staff, Gen. Christopher Musa, while aligning with the aforementioned participants, linked insecurity in the Sahel and Nigeria to both local and global issues, including poor governance, economic marginalisation, climate change, and the fallout from conflicts in North Africa and the Middle East.
He said that multilateral efforts through regional cooperation and collaboration were crucial to tackling these issues, adding that the Armed Forces were working tirelessly alongside regional and international partners to combat the challenges.
“Nevertheless, the path to lasting peace requires a multi-dimensional approach beyond military intervention, as the nature of insecurity in the Sahel is deeply rooted in socio-economic and political issues, necessitating comprehensive solutions,” Musa said.
Mohammed Idris, the chief host of the event and Minister of Information and National Orientation, said Nigeria was committed to addressing the root causes of terrorism, and tackling the underlying issues domestically, and in collaboration with international partners.
He called for determination, collaboration, and a united effort, to safeguard Nigeria’s territorial integrity in order to restore peace and stability in the terrorist ravaged Sahel region and entire Sub-Saharan Africa.
Idris emphasised the need to properly situate and understand the root causes of violent extremism in the Sahel, which he said was not an isolated issue, adding that no single country could tackle it alone.
“By understanding the root causes, evaluating the impact on our territorial integrity, and implementing strategic policy measures, we can effectively address the challenges posed by this crisis,” he said.
NAN is not alone in the bold and germane efforts to end the scourge of violent terrorism and terrorism in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Earlier in April, African leaders held a two-day African High-Level Counter-Terrorism Summit in Abuja with the theme: “Strengthening Regional Cooperation and Institution Building to Address the Evolving Threat of Terrorism in Africa.
The summit aimed at precipitating ‘African-led and African-owned’ solutions against terrorism; strengthening regional response to terrorism threats; enhancing regional cooperation; producing a comprehensive approach and addressing conditions conducive to the spread of terrorism, among others.
Almost simultaneously, the AU and ECOWAS also held an Inaugural Joint Consultative Meeting of the ECOWAS Mediation and Security Council (MSC) and the AU Peace and Security Council (PSC) at the Ambassadorial Level, in Abuja, aimed at addressing the subregion’s security challenges through multilateral efforts.
Analysts posit that in light of the prevailing menace of violent extremism and terrorism, curbing the scourge of violent extremism must start with addressing the root causes of extremism.
The antidote to the upsurge in violent extremism, in spite of the counter-terrorism strategies being put in place, also entails scaling up the tracking of terrorists and cutting off their sources of funding.
The solution also requires the strengthening of regional collaboration and cooperation, empowering local communities to develop their own solutions to prevent violent extremism, as well as adressing poverty and inequality, among others.
A mixed bag of regional cooperation and collaborative efforts alongside international partners, institution building, resource mobilisation, intelligence sharing, and social contracts, among others, are discernibly crucial to successfully tackling Sub-Saharan Africa’s security challenges.
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