Minister of Foreign Affairs, Amb. Yusuf Tuggar, has expressed fear over the increasing coups in West Africa, saying “it could snowball into engulfing the entire African continent”.
This was contained in an issued statement sent by the Special Assistant, Media and Communications Strategy to the minister, Al-Ƙasim AbdulƘadir, yesterday in Abuja.
According to the statement, Tuggar expressed his concern at the 10th Annual High-level Seminar on the Promotion of Peace and Security in Africa in Algeria.
He warned against describing the unconstitutional change in government in West Africa as solely a regional problem. He said West Africa was also faced with the challenges of terrorism and other cross-border criminalities.
The seminar, with the theme: “Resurgence of unconstitutional changes of governments in Africa: Global outlook, response and implications for the A3”, was aimed at assisting African Members of the UN Security Council in preparing to address peace and security issues on the continent.
At the seminar, the minister said it was easy to describe the military take-over in some West African countries as a problem of the region, not looking at the root causes, including the proliferation of arms from the war in Libya and other factors.
According to Tuggar, simply looking at the military take-over as a West African problem, is escapist and a denial of what may lie ahead. He said: “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 necessarily be responsible for climate change in the Sahel;and I can go on and on and on.
Tuggar 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, however, advised that the solution would be to bring life into African Union body of programmes because terrorist groups and other criminal gangs edging ways in border areas and West Africa had complex border areas.
