Nigeria : Terrorist attack last weekend, President Tinubu is severely tested

From Saturday to Monday, December 25, several villages were the target of a terrorist attack, even though the Nigerian government refuses to see it in that light and instead speaks of an inter-religious conflict. More than 160 deaths have been reported in this attack that took place in about twenty villages in the Plateau State, in central Nigeria.

All eyes are now on President Tinubu to see how he will handle this terrorist attack crisis. As the current President in office of the ECOWAS, the Nigerian President was expected to convene his peers to establish a special anti-terrorism unit to neutralize these criminals. However, there has been no such initiative, apart from the atrocious sanctions against countries that have chosen, in the absence of regional support, to take their destiny into their own hands.

Today, countries like Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger, in order to effectively face terrorism, which is nothing more than a war by proxy, have formed an alliance called the « Alliance of Sahel States ». The main objective of this alliance is to fight against terrorism and organized crime. Instead of supporting this alliance so that together we no longer talk about terrorism in West Africa, the ECOWAS has left the prey for the shadow by subjectively attacking the very creation of this alliance. Insidiously treating the approach of the three states as a rebellion.

The Presidents of the ECOWAS member states must understand that if the three signatory states of the Liptako-Gourma charter manage to drive terrorists out of their territories, these terrorists will seek refuge in neighboring countries as vast as the countries from which they are expelled. And the most plausible hypothesis is Nigeria. So, it is now or never for the ECOWAS, starting with President Bola Tinubu, to take the issue of insecurity very seriously by taking appropriate measures to spare the lives of innocent populations.

Ike Obiako