Brotherhood: Secret to Sustainable peace and security in Africa.
Africa, the second largest continent in the entire world; the home of 54 countries, several tribes and greatly endowed with mineral resources. However, despite the potential riches and greatness that could have been experienced in Africa in term of economic development and technological advancement, Africa have been having a retarded form of growth compared to other continents due to the economic progress greatly impeded by several insecurity issues such as civic wars, turbulence, crises and all form of destruction of properties, homes and millions of lives had been lost due to upheavals of several social crises including political crises.
Africa had been through a lot of insecurity over the decades. By considering the pre-independence era of many African countries, which was terrible as slave trade, colonialism and Apartheid government were the norms of those era. Then, Africans were primarily dominated, assaulted and maltreated by colonial masters. Although, through the labor of our heroes past, African countries started gaining independence from colonial masters, but independence of African states did not seem to be the solution to insecurity issues in Africa; as several upheavals and crises at post-independence era of African countries are even more grievous than the pre-independence era, resulting from several crises such as civic wars, abuse of human rights, power tussle of leaders, inter-tribal wars, boundary issues which had claim more lives to its ordeal due to the redundant security system within each country, regional economic communities and the continent at large. Also, the supply and use of better and more sophisticated weapons by terrorists and those causing unrest added to the recent aggravated insecurity issues. The current state of Africa is in potential dilemma and reasonable steps should be taken to prevent loss of lives to all forms of insecurity issues.
However, it is essential to take into cognizance that African leaders in the last 1950s and early 1960s, actually foresaw the great damage insecurity will bring in retarding the economy progress of the continent. This is one of the major reasons of inaugurating Organization of Africa unity (OAU) on January 25, 1963. However, despite what they foresaw during the period OAU was existing, several Africa countries were under dictatorship, military regime and human rights were seriously violated. Likewise, little to nothing was implemented on how well to curb conflicts or resolve them and guarantee security of Africans. Howbeit in view of this amidst others, African countries decide to bring about another body of organization “Africa Union” which succeeded OAU in 2002 to fill up some lapses not covered by OAU, in which security was germane. Indeed AU have more promising plans and goals in solving and interfering into insecurity issues in African countries.
Although, AU had played vital and major role in resolving conflicts over 15 years including1:
AU mission in Burundi – AMIB (2003-2004), AU military Observer Mission in the Comoros – MIOC (2004), AU Mission in Sudan – AMIS (2004-2007), Special Task force Burundi – (2006- 2009), AU Mission for support to the Elections in the Comoros - AMISEC (2006), AU Mission in Somalia - AMISOM (2007- date), AU Electoral and Security Assistance Mission to the Comoros – MAES (2007-2008), Democracy in Comoros (2008) an AU-UN Hybrid operation in Darfur - UNAMID (2008- date).
However, Africa is still housing several terrorists and more lives are being claimed due to several insecurity issues daily. Even, circumstances where AU seems to have record successes, it is even important to note that many innocent Africans had died carelessly due to late intervention and some died while AU was interfering due to poor planning in resolving such conflicts. And this can be accrues to the fact that Peace and Security Council (PSC) of AU pays little concern to conflict prevention or structural issues that encourage bad administration/governance and it is instead preoccupied with resolving conflicts after they have erupted1.
Contrariwise, my opinion in providing sustainable peace and security in Africa as a leader are enormous, but it will be useless, if it is not first inculcated and ingrained into the subconscious mind of all Africans; irrespective of background, class, religion, language, nationality, culture or tribe that we are all brothers. Indeed, there are a lot of variations between Africans; however, there should be a campaign through all media (i.e. both indigenous and modern day media) that we are all one, we are all brothers. This campaign should be targeted towards challenging us, educating us and motivating us to learn from other continents so that we can do our best to defend the peace and security of each community, town, city, nation and the continent as a whole. Likewise, this understanding will enable us to perceive rightly and correctly how we should all value the lives of people around us and pay the pristine price for safety at all cost. This will also make it easy for people to leak mischievous plans while necessary as we all decide to play our role to ensure peace in the bond of unity and corresponding actions can be in place before such plans get escalated to bring about great loss of people and properties.
Furthermore, more attention should be given on how well to educate masses some safety measures. It saddens my heart to see how we Africans take nonchalant attitude towards the safety of our lives, by risking our lives on what does not really worth claiming it. For instance, several buildings had collapsed due to poor project management which had claimed many lives, many road accidents had happened due to the careless attitudes of drivers, bad road construction etc., many Africans had died due to poor hygiene leading to several diseases, so also outbreak of deadly communicable disease e.g. Ebola. However, I believe public education on these issue through various media should be put in place to trained Africans and enlightened them on how well to cater for their lives and that of others.
In addition, the monitoring system of the continent is poor generally. This has really given a lot of evildoers a kind of confidence that they can just perpetrate all sort of evils without them being noticed, seen and arrested. The security council of AU should provide a good, reliable and outstanding monitoring system and this should be in collaboration with the security arms of each country/state and regional economic communities. By this monitoring system, it would be easy to have concrete information on who perpetrate evil and the right kind of justice can be mete out to such evil fellow. It will also help in having easy access to know impending dangers and the whereabouts of terrorists which will enhance quick and effective mobilization of the military team to stop such impending dangers.
Emphatically, it is obvious that Africa Union really want to resolve conflicts, but AU is really incapacitated due to poor funding by member states and poor/weak cooperation of nations encountering conflicts to support AU in resolving their conflicts amicably1. However, policy must be made to ensure proper financial participation of member states to sponsor the duties of the union, especially in resolving conflicts and resources needed to be deployed where needed by countries that have such resources. Special thanks to the intervention of United Nations and private individuals sponsoring AU, but proper monitoring is needed to ensure to know if the resources are well harnessed for the reasons they are provided for. Also, more support is actively needed to ensure the active and effective mobilization of military troops to resolve conflicts just as that UNAMID.
In summary, I strongly agree with the speculation of many others that the economic growth and development of this continent is dependent on the fact of having sustainable peace and security. Likewise, I am convinced if the aforementioned points can be implemented, especially the inculcation into the subconscious mind of Africans that we are one and we should stop wasting our lives; but we should ensure the bond of unity in peace, this will enhance and promote peace and unity in Africa.
In conclusion, I believe in the peace and unity of Africa, I believe we all have our roles to play in making things work in this part of the world housing over 1.2 billion people ranking number 2 among regions of the world (roughly equivalent to “continents”), ordered by population2. I believe it is still possible to ensure that peace reigns and govern perpetually despite several histories of war we have had and several rumors of wars that are issuing up daily. Therefore, there is need for quick implementation of what should be implemented to ensure that peace reign. I believe in one Africa and I stand for the unity and peace in Africa.
REFERENCES
- Paul D. Williams (2010), The African Union’s Conflict Management Capabilities; Council on Foreign Relations.
- Worldometers (www.worldometers.info/world-population/africa), retrieved on June 27, 2017.