‘How Nigeria can boost security in Africa’

June 10,2013 BY virtue of holding the portfolio of Commissioner for Political Affairs of the African Union (AU), Nigeria can help bridge the security gaps that have become apparent in the test running of the African Peace and Security Architecture in readiness for full take-off in 2015. This is, among the other reasons, why the Institute of Security Studies (ISS) has now signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Nigerian Institute of Peace and Conflict Resolution (IPCR) as well as the Nigerian Institute for International Affairs (NIIA). According to the ISS Regional Director, Ambassador Olusegun Akinsanya, this stems also from the fact that there currently exists gaps in the principle of subsidiary between the AU and the Regional Economic Communities (RECs) on the one hand; the AU and the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) on the other hand which is provided in Chapter 8 of the UN Charter to make for badly needed synergy in peace and security interventions. The African Development Bank (AfDB) disclosed recently that at the turn of the millennium, the continent’s Gross Domestic Product GDP was put at $600 billion. By the close of last year, this had risen to $2. 2 trillion. But development experts believe that a huge chunk of African finances and energies are being consumed by burgeoning conflicts themselves as well as efforts to manage and contain them. “This is the reason why we are now talking about the future of peace support operations. The AU currently lacks rapid response. Something spontaneous. For instance, if not for Chad and France, the insurgents would have overrun Mali. That’s where countries that have resources and operational capacity like Nigeria should come in. But this ought to be systematic.” Speaking recently in an exclusive interview with The Guardian on the way forward for primordial and neo conflicts that now dot Africa’s landscape, Ambassador Akinsanya cited good examples where gaps bridged had helped to include the interventions of Ethiopia in Abyei, in Sudan last year and the work of UN Interim Security Force for Abyei (UNIFSA) in Kofordan and then the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM), which was also stepped up in Kenya in the country’s national interest. With all these experiences, the AU wants to operate but now they are saying pending the operationalisation of the African Peace and Security Architecture (APSA),” he added. Maintaining that the continent’s biggest challenge today is peace and security, Akinsanya stressed that the AU agenda and strategic plan for 2063 must also now address the issue of Intra-African conflicts which are on the ascendancy. He said: “Some conflicts like those in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Sudan won’t just go away. Then added to this are the new threats, insurgencies, terrorism, human trafficking, drugs, climate change adaptation, and its impact on security... new threats embody environmental sustainability, our submission is to the effect that the armed tension and insurgency vulnerability that led to the big bloodbath in Baga, northern Nigeria is linked to the drying lake Chad in Nigeria’s north east which has resulted in the exasperating need for new jobs. The pressure exerted by unemployment has clearly exacerbated environmental sustainability and has now thrown up food security issues as well.”