Rising Cases of Insecurity in Africa Sends Wrong Signals

It’s shameful  in the modern day of open communication platforms to choose to kill and main others to further  political, religious and ideological agenda. We condemn in the strongest terms possible, the murder of innocent civilians as happened in a recent bomb blast that left 71 persons dead and over 100 injured in Nigeria. The surge in insecurity and conflict in Africa as witnessed in DR Congo, Republic of South Sudan, Central African Republic, Egypt, Kenya, Somalia and Libya among others, is a cause for urgent concern. As the continent celebrates its goals in opening up democratic space, violent conflict sends the signal that all is not well.

Africans are probably celebrating  penetration of mobile telephony and internet access in the continent but holding tight on exclusionary tactics. The indigenous African culture that nurtures dialogue appear to be overtaken by brute force. The continent’s decades at the United Nations appear to have failed to open up intra African sense of diplomatic solutions to disagreements. It is in this light that Nobel Laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka’s call that we should not just pray but wake up to the reality and talk frankly  among ourselves should be embraced.

Our perception that we are tragically limited creatures whose selfish and dangerous impulses can be contained only by social contrivances should be shunned and replaced with an unconstrained vision that accommodates dialogue, reason and validation. One way to achieve this is to address causes to insecurity. It’s also important to retrain security forces on how to tackle criminal acts as opposed to them herding whole communities as suspects. Finally it’s important to modernize the continent’s justice system so as not to let loose the forces of impunity which tend to perpetuate violent approaches to addressing individual, community and country interests.