This
morning in Dakar, Senegal, an International Forum on Peace and Security
in Africa kicks off, as a follow-up to an earlier one (December 2013)
convened by the French government in Paris, which brought together
African Heads of State and governments and six international
organisations (the United Nations, African Union, European Union, World
Bank, International Monetary Fund and the African Development Bank) to
talk about security and economic issues as they affect Africa. The
ongoing Dakar meeting, attended by about 300 delegates drawn from
government, military, business, civil society and the media, is meant to
“deepen reflection” on the pledges and resolutions from the Paris
meeting.
Africa’s security challenges have no doubt taken on
new and interesting dimensions in recent years, demanding bold and
urgent and innovative responses. Where once coups and civil wars were
the league leaders, we now have to contend with the spectre of extremist
Islam, manifesting everywhere from the East (Kenya; Al-Shabaab) to the
North (Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb) to the West (Boko Haram in
Nigeria, Chad and Cameroon).
And then, there
are the transnational criminal groups which command economic powers on a
scale that would make the rebel warlords of the 1990s look like child
soldiers. Cocaine has become the New Improved diamond. Writing recently
in Newsweek, Journalist Alex Perry tells the disheartening story of how
African countries have become, in recent years, hubs on the global
cocaine trade route (from Latin America to Western Europe).
Perry
writes that when the North American market for cocaine became
saturated, cocaine dealers (based in Latin America) started to look
towards the virgin markets of Europe. And then they realised that
“half-way to Europe, within range of small planes and fishing boats,
were a series of eminently corruptible African countries with little in
the way of law, government, air forces or navies.” African countries
therefore found starring role as conduits for cocaine making its way to
Europe. Perry says unofficial estimates put the quantity of cocaine
moving through Guinea Bissau at 60 tonnes, accounting for a lot more
than the country’s official economic output.
All of these
various manifestations of insecurity end up being linked to one another.
Perry’s argument in his piece, titled, “Blood Lines: How cocaine nights
fund beheadings” is that the cocaine trade (in which Africa features
prominently) helps fund terrorism around the world. Extremist groups
raise significant amounts of funds from criminal enterprises: cocaine,
oil theft, kidnapping, etc. By fighting crime wholeheartedly, we are
therefore helping check the rise of terrorists.
Unchecked,
however, these challenges will definitely grow in size and strength. We
thought the Al-Qaeda of yesterday was brutal; today, we have the ISIS
and Boko Haram, groups so violent that even Al-Qaeda has openly
condemned and dissociated itself from them.
This is where I will
bring the issue home to Nigeria. Because all security, like all
politics, is local. It is not possible to overemphasise the role of
Nigeria as regional and continental giant, in matters relating to
security and peace. Nigeria accounts for half of the population of West
Africa, a sixth of the continent’s entire population, and roughly a
fifth of the continent’s economic output. It is also now home to one of
the most virulent expressions of instability the world is currently
seeing.
Yet, for some tragic reason, we are permanently a
footnote to the news in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and elsewhere. When the
US Senator John McCain announces that, left to him, he “wouldn’t be
waiting for some kind of permission from some guy named Goodluck
Jonathan” before sending in troops to rescue the Chibok girls, apart
from the fact that McCain is an oft-grumpy dude with a penchant for
controversial pronouncements, it is also in my view a pointer to just
how the rest of the world sees Nigeria: Helpless, uninspiring.
And
it is understandable, even if not justifiable. There is little or no
initiative on our part as a country to take charge of the most
challenging factors affecting us. I cringe every time I see that
President Jonathan has gone on yet another junket to Chad in search of a
solution to Boko Haram. Call me a foreign policy novice, but shouldn’t
the Chadian President be the one coming to Abuja, not the other way
round? My view is that Abuja should be the one leading in convening the
all-important security meetings involving the region and country,
instead of abdicating that responsibility to Paris or London or
Washington.
The quote that follows (I have previously used it in
this column – in a piece on Boko Haram, published June 10, 2013) is
from the book, “Soldiers of Fortune: Nigerian Politics under Buhari and
Babangida”, by Nigerian military historian, Max Siollun: “Buhari was in
charge of troops sent to Nigeria’s north-eastern border region in 1983
to prevent infiltration by armed rebels from the neighbouring Republic
of Chad. After his troops successfully cleared the Chadian rebels from
the border area, the troops advanced several kilometres into Chadian
territory. The political hierarchy ordered Buhari to withdraw his
troops, but he refused, arguing that the Chadian rebels would return to
the area as soon as his troops departed. Buhari’s view was that it was
futile to risk the lives of soldiers by confronting the rebels, only to
withdraw and allow them to return once the objective had been achieved.”
How has Nigeria gone from that country pursuing rebels deep
into enemy territory, to one whose President runs off at the slightest
opportunity to take pictures with the President of a country with a
population and GDP smaller than that of Lagos? It doesn’t quite sound
right. Recall a decade ago (late 2003), when President Olusegun
Obasanjo, obsessed with catching the now-deceased Beninoise cross-border
car-snatching kingpin, Hammani Tidjani, ordered the closure of
Nigeria’s border with Benin.
According to news reports at that
time, the closure hit the Benin economy so hard it forced the government
to ferret Tidjani out of hiding and hand him over to Nigerian
authorities (the saga also cost a dozen high-ranking Beninoise security
chiefs their jobs; fired by an angry President Mattieu Kerekou for
alleged complicity with Tidjani). As far as I know, at no time did then
President Obasanjo head for Benin cap-in-hand in search of a solution to
a problem that needed decisive action on Nigeria’s part.
But
let me also add: The blame I am generously offloading does not
exclusively belong to the government. Nigeria’s academia, think-tanks
and the media are all guilty. We should be doing a better job, on all
facets, of agenda-setting and thought-leadership regarding our security
crisis.
But maybe when you’ve got a President whose trademark
lines boil down to abdicating responsibility, maybe it is easy to see
why that attitude has infected the entire national response. Again, that
is something I’ve complained about in this column – how the President
enjoys singing that “terrorism is a global problem” and “we are not the
only ones suffering” and “this too shall pass” and “the international
community should rise up to help Nigeria”.
While there is truth
in that stance, it should not be the headline story. The headline story
should be projection of a presidential and government attitude that
takes responsibility, and that views international assistance as the
icing, not the cake.
By all indices – demographics, geopolitics,
economics – Nigeria deserves to occupy a more important place in global
consciousness, and not simply as a victim. Not simply as that country
that gives up more than 200 girls to a terrorist group without a fight,
but instead a country that takes the initiative and shows no hesitation
to demonstrate decisiveness in dealing with its security challenges.
The
excitement that greeted Nigeria’s conquest of Ebola is evidence of just
how rare good news from Nigeria is, and possibly how desperate the
world is to hear uplifting news from the most important black country in
the world. The Ebola narrative has clearly shown that there just might
be a massive market for good news from Nigeria (hint, hint).
Recall
that that was what followed Nigeria’s conquest of Ebola – all attention
turned on us for lessons and insight. Now, how about seeing if we could
replicate that success story with Boko Haram, the criminal gangs in the
Niger Delta, the pirates in the Gulf of Guinea, and the urban
kidnappers everywhere else? Even though the scenarios are very different
– Ebola is not Boko Haram, obviously – the responses should all share
something in common: the confidence to fight back, and to boldly seek to
make a difference.
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