In April 2014, the world woke up to the sad news about the kidnapping of 276 girls from a boarding school at Chibok, a village in northern Nigeria, by a militant group – Boko Haram. So painful was the report that it triggered an international campaign advocating for their release with the hashtag #BringBackOurGirls.
Some of the girls were later released by the armed group, whilst others also managed to escape. The Nigeria government also managed to secure the release of some of the girls from captivity, but others are still missing and have not been found up to date.
As if this was not enough, a new trend is emerging where armed groups, which have no affiliation with Boko Haram, have also started kidnapping secondary school children from their boarding houses for ransoms.
This development has worsened the already terrible security situation in northern Nigeria. Just last week Friday, as many as hundred gunmen reportedly invaded a boarding school and took into captivity 279 students. A few days later the Governor of Zamfara State, Bello Matawalle, told the international press that he had managed to secure the release of the students, and that no ransom was paid.
It is not clear whether the Governor was telling the truth or not about the non-payment of a ransom, but there were earlier reports that some of the parents were paying these ransoms to the armed groups for the release of their children. In the view of The Chronicle, the issue going on in northern Nigeria should not be left in the hands of the Nigerian government alone, though we admit that Africa’s most populous nation is a sovereign state.
Liberia, Sierra Leon, Ivory Coast are equally sovereign states, but in the name of ensuring stability in the West African sub-region, the Economic Community of West Africa States (ECOWAS) moved troops to the above-mentioned countries to ensure stability during their civil wars.
To us, at The Chronicle, it is high time ECOWAS started dialoguing with Nigeria and see how it could collectively deal with the instability in that part of West Africa. If Ghana, which is the next economic power house to Nigeria, Ivory Coast, Senegal and others countries sit down aloof and pretend that nothing is going on, that madness of kidnapping school children would soon be with them as well.
These criminals obviously have cells where they strike from. To deal with the situation, these cells must be located and crush.
Since our own President Akufo-Addo is the current Chairman of ECOWAS, The Chronicle suggests to him to summon an emergency meeting, whether in Accra or Abuja, for our leaders in the sub-region to discuss the issue and come out with strategy to deal with the situation.
But for the swift intervention by the French government, Al Qaeda would have today overrun all of us, looking at the speed with which they were advancing from the Sahel region towards the south.
Surely, ECOWAS must be seen to be adopting preventive measures, instead of curative ones. When this kidnapping of students craze engulfs the whole region, it would be very difficult to handle. May God perish our thoughts, but should this happen, the stability and future of West Africans would be bleak.
If we all agree that education is the bedrock for the development of every nation, what will be our future if, for the fear of being kidnapped, parents stop sending their children to school?
ECOWAS leaders must look at the larger ship implications of what is going on in Nigeria and try to quell it, before it explodes beyond repairs. Here in Ghana, we did not know what is called armed robbery on the scale we are witnessing now. In the 1960s and 70s we were hearing this sort of news from our sister countries, but today, the problem is here with us.
We are now living in a global village so whatever is happening in sister countries should concern us all. We hope ECOWAS is reading us.
The post Editorial: Troubles in northern Nigeria must concern ECOWAS appeared first on The Chronicle Online.
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