{"id":14378,"date":"2021-04-29T14:30:18","date_gmt":"2021-04-29T14:30:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ndarason.com\/?p=14378"},"modified":"2021-04-29T14:30:18","modified_gmt":"2021-04-29T14:30:18","slug":"nigeria-is-hungry-for-peace","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ndarason.com\/en\/nigeria-is-hungry-for-peace\/","title":{"rendered":"Nigeria is hungry for peace"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The country is insecure and urgently needs help to stop the violence, killings, kidnappings and abductions \u2212 and the escalating vicious attacks by insurgents.<\/p>\n<p>This week Nigeria\u2019s parliament called on the presidency, armed forces and police to address the country\u2019s mounting security crisis.<\/p>\n<p>The National Assembly had gone as far as urging President Muhammadu Buhari to declare a state of emergency.<\/p>\n<p>Other politicians and civilians had called for foreign aid, saying it was the only way to end the crisis.<\/p>\n<p>Bukola Saraki, the former president of the senate, called on the federal government to seek foreign aid to help stop the escalating insecurity in the country.<\/p>\n<p>Saraki said asking for help was \u201cnot a sign of weakness\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>In the past month, there had been acts of violence in many parts of the country, including in the states of Anambra, Kaduna, Yobe, Niger and Lagos. Some areas had been attacked two or three times in one week.<\/p>\n<p>Mohammed Ali Ndume, the chairman of the senate committee on security, told BBC Hausa on Sunday that the military needed manpower, adding that more soldiers needed to be recruited to fight the insurgency.<\/p>\n<p>Hajja Bawaye Umar, a resident of Maiduguri, said Nigeria was \u201chungry for peace\u201d and it was the responsibility of the government to pave the way to achieve it so that all sectors of the country could thrive.<\/p>\n<p>But professor Khalifa Dikwa, a public affairs analyst, was opposed to the country asking for foreign aid.<\/p>\n<p>He said Nigeria had the military capability and capacity to quash insurgents, although he conceded that there was a need for more sophisticated weapons to enable the military to face the country\u2019s enemies fearlessly.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cPeople don\u2019t like Western soldiers because they don\u2019t trust them and their safety cannot be guaranteed. Soldiers from the West often end up staying in the place where they were assigned even after their mission ends. There are soldiers from the West in almost all francophone countries and they face security challenges. I don\u2019t support seeking military support from the Western world,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>Dikwa said the government should liaise with more-experienced, retired soldiers to develop new workable war tactics and strategies that would help soldiers and other sections of the military in the fight against the insurgents.<\/p>\n<p>He said if the government needed outside help, it should seek support only from African countries.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe federal government must avoid seeking military support from the West.\u00a0 African countries have fought similar wars in their own countries and know the right strategies that Nigeria can follow.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He said Nigeria\u2019s soldiers were champions in combat war but they were not able to crush the insurgents because their fighting was undercover and no one could tell where they were hiding, or where or when they might attack.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe military needs modern weapons and technology to fight against the insurgents. It does not need to hire soldiers from the Western world,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>Dikwa said getting foreign help from African countries would take time and he cautioned the government to take action as soon as it was able.<\/p>\n<p>Tijjani Jibrin Yerwa, a resident of Maiduguri, said the government and public needed to join hands and fight the insurgency until it ended.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe public thinks that the government is not serious about the fight against terror, especially by members of the Jam\u0101\u2019at Ahl as-Sunnah lid-Da\u2019way Wa\u2019l-Jih\u0101d [more commonly known as Boko Haram] and the\u00a0<em>Islamic State in West Africa Province<\/em>\u00a0[<em>ISWAP]<\/em> across the northeast of the country. We face attacks almost daily,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>Amina Mala, also from Maiduguri, told RNI reporter Amina Abbagana that the country, especially the northeast, had been devastated after numerous attacks by insurgents.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe have to live with escalating violence, killings, kidnappings and abductions and attacks on a regular basis. Most civilians in the country \u2013 especially the northeast \u2013 live with fear and insecurity. We can\u2019t go one like this.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>She said the insurgents had become more dangerous and had even started attacking other areas of Nigeria.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe need external support. That\u2019s the only way we, as a country, will be able to confront and overcome the insurgents,\u201d she said. \u201cThe insurgents are beginning to infiltrate all areas, it\u2019s not just the northeast any more.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The country is insecure and urgently needs help to stop the violence, killings, kidnappings and abductions \u2212 and the escalating vicious attacks by insurgents. This week Nigeria\u2019s parliament called on [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":14380,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14378","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-en"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ndarason.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14378"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ndarason.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ndarason.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ndarason.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ndarason.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14378"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ndarason.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14378\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ndarason.com\/en\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ndarason.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14378"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ndarason.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14378"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ndarason.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14378"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}