•Proliferation of small arms still a great concern, says Ashiru
The United Nations (UN) will help in ridding Nigeria of terrorists, the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for West Africa and Chairman of the Nigeria/Cameroon Mixed Commission, Mr. Said Djinnit, has said.
He spoke in Abuja yesterday at a meeting with the Minister of Foreign Affiars Olugbenga Ashiru.
Djinnit said: “I want to come especially to convene their (UN member-states) sympathy to Nigeria because whatever Nigeria does, it does it for the whole region and also to discuss with the minister to explore ways that we can work within the region, within the global community to fight this kind of problems.”
The country, he said, had played an important role in the subregion and throughout the continent.
He said: “I came here to discuss because ECOWAS and the Africa Union have been working hard to achieve peace, democracy and stability but every time we get closer to our objectives, we see that there are new challenges emerging and unfortunately with all the efforts deployed by the leaders of ECOWAS, we are still confronted by a new emerging threat of organised crime and basically the threat of terrorism and Nigeria is at the heart of all these efforts to address all the challenges and I came here to tell you how we can together prepare to create provision for our countries, states and society to be prevented from this kind of situation and when they are affected, how we can work together because this kind of fight unfortunately has the capacity to affect the whole region.
“In organised crime, Nigeria has become one of the conflict zones of child trafficking and organised crime. Of course, the drugs come from Latin American going especially to Europe and Asia but they are taking advantage of the porous borders in Africa and the lack of capacity, institutional and physical capacity. In addition to that, now there are a new issues on organised crime and terrorism, which are affecting the whole region and they know that Nigeria is facing such challenges.”
Ashiru said small arms were still a major concern, blaming illicit trafficking of small arms for some of the arms’ struggle in the sub-region.
He said: “It is true we have a challenge today in West Africa of insecurity and I want to thank the UN for your efforts in assisting West Africa/ecowas to handle these challenges we have been having. The issue of small arms is of great concern to us in West Africa and I know we have had series of workshops and seminars in the UN on this very crucial issue. I believe we will continue to work hard on this because when you talk about the issue of terrorism, in our own challenges they are in Nigeria. I believe from what you have seen, there seems to be huge proliferation of small arms, which have contributed to the menace posed by these terrorist groups and whatever we can do to stop this illicit trafficking, we will welcome from all the governments in West Africa because all the countries have spoken out that if not handled seriously and urgently, the issue of small arms will continue to pose great threat to us in the West African sub-region and it is a big problem.”
