Tuggar: Military Take-Over In West Africa May Engulf The Continent If Allowed To Fester

By Bukar Bolori

Nigeria’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Ambassador Yusuf Tuggar has warned against describing the unconstitutional change in government in West Africa as solely a regional problem, insisting that it could snowball into engulfing the entire African continent and add to the challenges of terrorism and other cross-border criminalities.

The Minister gave the warning during a panel discussion: “Resurgence of Unconstitutional Changes of Government in Africa: Global Outlook, Response and Implications for the A3”, at the 10th Annual High-level Seminar on the Promotion of Peace and Security in Africa: Assisting African Members of the UN Security Council in Preparing to Address Peace and Security Issues on the Continent.

At the Seminar which ended on December 18th at Oran, Algeria, the Minister said it is easy to describe the military take over in some West African countries as a problem of the region not looking at the root causes which include the proliferation of arms as a result of the war in Libya and other factors.

He said simply looking at the military take-over as a West African problem is escapist and a denial of what may lie ahead.

He said: “In examining the root causes of UCG and proffering solutions. It is important to consider just not endogenous factors of governance, election processes but also important to consider the exogenous factors, some might look at West Africa and say West Africa must have a problem and that is why it is happening there.”

He argued that: “West Africa was not responsible for the implosion of Libya that brought out the proliferation of arms, West Africa was not responsible for failure of EU’s Sahel Strategy. It may not necessary be responsible for climate change in the Sahel and I can go on and on and on. The easier option is to ignore all these things or to wish them away and simply say there is something West Africa is doing wrong and try and accommodate the new military regimes, but that would be fatal for the whole of Africa because we want to get to the issue of fighting terrorism in the entire Africa, in North Africa and other parts.”

He further stated that “It is easy to think the solution is to accommodate these new military regimes and work with them because they are dear to you and that way you can continue to fight against terrorism but this would not work.”

He advised: “I think the solution would be to bring life into Africa Union body of programmes because terrorist groups and indeed other criminal gangs edging ways in border areas and West Africa has complex border areas, issues of territory are difficult to man and manage and the African Union body of programmes bringing about development, bringing about infrastructure would be more coercive and more coordinated and bring development of infrastructure when we don’t give in to this military takeover on pressures from the social media.”