POLICY BRIEF ON INSECURITY AND TERRORISM IN AFRICA: BEATING THE PANDEMIC

​Insecurity is a very serious pandemic in Africa, especially in the Western part of the continent. The lack of a centralized multi-national task force, ECOWAS border patrol, easy access and poor legislative protocols have allowed Africa to become a free hub to terrorists and a synonymous continent with insecurity.

This threat has become a cankerworm eating up the safety of the citizens of this continent and has become a major reason why international businesses and multi-national firms decide to avoid the continent completely most times.

Some of the causes of this pandemic in Africa is first of all the government of member states. Most politicians in Africa, especially in West African countries like Ghana and Nigeria, import poor people from Chad and Niger to cause chaos and institute violence as well as for electoral malpractices to ensure their victories, and once those thugs or mercenaries as we may call them get too comfortable they become dangers to the member state.

It's just like leaving fire on a gas cooker for too long; it can burn the entire kitchen and if care is not taken, the house down. Those criminals proceed to start kidnapping, trafficking people and killing them to trafficking organs, all for money.

Some politicians even privately engage the services of these people in order to carry out political and organized syndicate crimes like high profile ​assassination of political opponents, taking out activists who strongly oppose of their policies and key political figures who refuse to align with their movement. Others run drug cartels and use them as barons and collectors, while others allegedly run brothers and are involved in shipping young women to Italy and Saudi Arabia for prostitution purposes.

One Other institutions which has also failed are the African Union and the Economic Community of West African States,—the AU and ECOWAS respectively. Both institutions have now become toothless bulldogs in the control and organization of the continent both regionally and as a whole, the recent secessions of Mali and Burkina Faso from the organizations and their military review government are a testament to that.

These institutions should be focused on unifying African using Marcus Gravery's principles of Pan Africanism by introducing a unified currency, security network and a very solid educational and inter-state university system. They are both fighting useless wars, both charters are outdated and the delivery from them is really poor. We understand that the United Nations which is often compared to them nd is their model, was not built in a day, but these people are not building or working at all.

The United Nations has a small sort of authority on member nations but African organizations are basically useless. Unlike the UN that has bodies and sub-organizations like the ICJ, WHO, UNICEF, UNESCO but to mention a few,

​Then lastly the African citizens are responsible for most of their own woes—"Security consciousness, as my African father would say, "is the greatest sort of protection." And my dad is right, the government and its corrupt agencies like the police and corruption driven police and favouritism based armed forces cannot protect all of of the citizenry as they are mainly busy looking for how to fill their pockets. African citizens should take minor and baby step security measures like locking their doors—Now this remind me of a story I read online of a student of the Olabisi Onabanjo University, who stayed off campus. Some bandits broke into their flat and the noise of the attacks on their neighbours jolted her awake, however her door was not locked and the men were able to successfully cart away her valuables, but lucky she was unharmed. If her door was locked she would have bought some time to be able to alert the security agencies. Then also African citizens should also be taught self-defense and other means to protect themselves.

Then reports and investigations also show that indigenes connive with these bandits to kidnap people who might have offended them previously or who they might have issue with, these operations thus open floodgates for these wicked individuals to keep perpetrating criminal activities.

Now the solutions to these problems are very harsh and may seem inhumane but they are necessary for a renewed and revamped Africa.

Now the first one is to ensure free and fair elections nationally and regionally, this may seem abstract but it cannot be overemphasized as the nature of how they are elected determines the quality of their governance, what type or level of governance do we then except, basically the apple does not fall far from the tree. Once electoral reforms are made,then democratic and developmental reforms follow.

Secondly, the police and military systems need serious revamping and restructuring, a no-bribery and corruption policy need to be adopted and those forces need engagement, inter-peacekeeping operations should be facilitated within all African states as this will be more dangerously effective in the pouring down of these strongholds of terrorism.

Moving on, a No-Mercy and No-negotiation mentality should be introduced to the armed forces of African nations, any terrorist apprehended must be killed with immediate effect to send shockwaves and deterrents and to also save space in our security and correctional facilities as a whole, the reason for the adoption of this theory is the fact that a terrorist is worst than a cultist, they can never repent and when you feel you can change them you're making a grave mistake, they must be obliterated immediately, without remorse.

Moving further, we need to foster collaborations with superpowers who would be instrumental in putting an end to this surge.

When they come in they would use advanced weapons and military tactics to put an end to the movement once and for all.

Furthermore, citizens should serve as whistleblowers to security operatives, if they see something they should say something and any person caught working or serving as a criminal accessory to such criminal and terrorist movements should be given maximum sentence in prison or better still the extreme capital punishment because to me if you can hire a terrorist to obliterate someone, you could also do it yourself and you are also a partaker in such iniquity.

Without security Africa cannot develop and grow, so extreme measures will lead to extreme results and economic growth.