At the just concluded African, Carribean and Pacific/ European Union (ACP/EU) joint Parliamentary Assembly session in the Mozambiquan Capital, Moputo on 1st November, 2022, Sierra Leone’s Hon. Saa Emerson Lamina lamented on the “severe threats” of terrorism and it’s attendant compendiums on the peace, stability and security of Africa.
“Terrorism in sub Saharan Africa is a threat to Africa that continues to pose severe consequences on the peace, stability and security of our continent, Hon. Lamina posited, pointing out that the threat to terrorism has now been compounded by the radical attachments of terrorist cells with organized crimes including human, drugs and arms trafficking gangs that are widely spread across the continent and thus according to the Sierra Leone Member of Parliament, is been necessitated by Africa’s porous and poorly controlled and secured frontiers.
Hon. Emerson Lamina was concurring and accelerating the concern of President Fillipe Nyusi of Mozambique, who earlier during the opening of the 42nd Session condemned terrorism and terrorist activities in Africa.
Hon. Lamina also maintained that internal politics and regional power plays are nurturing the acute state of insecurity in sub Saharan Africa and this state of insecurity is also adversely affecting the stability of the socioeconomic development trajectories of States on the Continent.
He therefore suggested that terrorism, like climate change, the COVID-19 pandemic and now the Russian-Ukraine war, have a guiding thread that inter-links these global crises and therefore require global cooperation and multilateralism among equals to adequately address these global menaces.
The Member of Parliament from Sierra Leone therefore posited the following suggestions as possible remedies to these global conundrums:
โTo strengthen bilateral and regional cooperations to maintenance the regionโs peace, security and socioeconomic development aimed at winning the support of local populations;
โTo develop an integrated anti-terrorism approach by governments, regional organizations and the international community;
โTo bolster judicial cooperation and the monitoring of illicit financial flows within the ACP regions; and
โOACPS/EU countries should engage in intelligence sharing and coordination as cornerstone of an integrated strategy to ensure intelligence-guided operations that will blacklist perpetrators and also ensure the implementation and enforcement of a Sub Saharan Arrest Warrant for cross-border perpetrators in order to deprive them of safe havens and easy access to financial resources.
Hon. Lamina therefore expressed heartfelt condolences to the peoples of Chad, Somalia, Mali, Burkina Faso and Ivory Coast who have suffered terrorist attacks in recent times and re-echoed the need for a global partnership and strategy alignments to address what he concluded his submission by calling, this callous method of addressing grievances associated with politics, as”inhuman”.
Meanwhile, he went on to close by accentuating the call and endorsement of President Julius Maada Bio’s bid for Sierra Leone’s Non-Permanent Member Status for Sierra Leone in the Security Council, stating that the country deserves such endorsement considering her roles in the global peace architecture framework especially given the country’s quantum leap in the areas of stability at home and ensuring peace and stability at the global stage.
“Sierra Leone’s ascension to this feat will deservedly place President Bio in the ranks of former President Olusegun Obansanjo of Nigeria, former President John Jerry Rawlings of Ghana and current President Muhammadou Buhari of Nigeria, who were one-time military officers but were democratically elected to serve their respective peoples within the realm of democracy and good governance.
