By Sunday Adaji Esq
In the UK-Africa summit held recently, Boris Johnson, British Prime Minister, said: “Africa is the future and UK has a huge and active role to play in that future.”
Boris Johnson’s quote above explains the need for cooperation, collaboration and interdependence. For over a decade, Nigeria has been having serious security challenges. The challenges have become worse few years back due to the farmers-herdsmen clash. Hundreds of thousands of civilians, soldiers and other law enforcement agents in the insurgencies. Statistics shows that the number of people killed by the herdsmen within a few years far outnumber those killed by Boko Haram since over a decade when Boko Haram has been on rampage.
From the look of things, terrorism is not likely going to be eliminated in Nigeria in a jiffy. Just when we start relaxing and thinking that Boko Haram has been degraded, they would emerge from nowhere and cause havoc and returned to Sambisa forest. Boko Haram troop has no respect to the sanctity of human life. They kidnap and kill innocent citizens in cold blood. Apart from Boko Haram and herdsmen, there are are dare devil criminals who go about kidnapping people and demanding ransom for their release. In some cases, the kidnappers end up killing the victims and dumping their bodies in the open.
Our military are doing their best they can to contain the terrorists but they are yet to find an answer to the Boko Haram puzzle.
The Answer
I think the answer is collaboration and partnership. We commend the effort of Mr. President, Muhammadu Buhari, for initiating the idea of the Multi-national Task Force, comprising the soldiers of some neighboring countries. I also think that we should seek the support of other international communities. We have seen the role France is playing in fighting terrorists in Mali. We have seen how the US military was able to deal with ISIS in Syria and Iraq. We have seen how collaboration had brought about massive success.
This brings us back to Boris Johnson’s quote cited at the beginning of this article. He said Africa is the future and that UK has a huge and active role to play in that future. If his words are not mere political statement, then, one area UK need to play a huge and active role in Africa is the security situation in Nigeria. It is okay to forge economic and social partnership with African countries, but if lives and properties are not secured, no partnership can succeed. Just as we need UK, we also need the US. With the support of the duo, this war against Boko Haram will end in a jiffy.
We urge our government to explore the area of collaboration and together we will restore peace in Nigeria in particular and in Africa as a whole.
CAVEAT
Lawyers Alert hereby puts our readers on notice that this article is based on the writers opinion and do not necessarily represent the views of the organization except otherwise stated.
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