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Tag: War

  • War against Boko Haram not over – Obasanjo

    War against Boko Haram not over – Obasanjo

    Former President Olusegun Obasanjo has said the war against the deadly terrorist sect, Boko Haram is not over.

    The former Nigerian leader also urged the international community to help tackle the humanitarian crisis in the North East.

    “We call on the international community for help. Yes, the Boko Haram terrorists are on the run, but the Boko Haram menace has not been completely solved,” he said at the donation of 35,930 kilograms of seeds by the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), to Borno State Government in Maiduguri on Monday.

    Obasanjo, an IITA Ambassador, said the international community had great role to play in ensuring food security in the region.

    “We have to tell the world that our problem in the North East is not our inability to feed ourselves because we are lazy.

    “Our problem has to do with the menace of Boko Haram and the insecurity that we have to face for the past years”, he said.

    Obasanjo commended Gov​ernor​ Kashim Shettima for his numerous achievements in agriculture in spite of the Boko Haram insurgency.

    “When I came in to the Farm Center, I saw this line of tractors, 1000 of them, I also saw combined harvesters complete with their implements.

    “What stuck my mind was that we need to tell the world that our problem in the North-East is not because people are not willing or ready to work in agriculture.

    “It has to do with the insecurity associated with the Boko Haram insurgency”, he said.

    In his address, Shettima thanked the former president for the visit and ​for ​identifying with Borno people​.

    He said​ most of the Internally Displaced Persons, IDPs had started returning back to their liberated communities.

    Shettima​ noted that the provision of new improved varieties of maize, rice, millet, soyabean, sorghum, cowpea​,​ will go along way in completing efforts of the state government in its agricultural revolutionary drive address unemployment and hunger, and promised continued partnership with his government and IITA.

     

  • Southern Kaduna: Resolve crisis now or be ready for war – CAN warns FG

    The Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) has warned the President Muhammadu Buhari led Federal Government to either resolve the lingering Southern Kaduna crisis with immediate effect or be prepared for war.

    This was revealed by the President of the Christian body, Reverend Olasupo Ayokunle.

    He stressed that it is only when the suspects are made to face the wrath of the law that tension that had risen in the two states would reduce.

    Ayokunle, who is also the President of the Nigerian Baptist Convention (NBC), warned that failure to stop the unprovoked killings by suspected herdsmen in some parts of the country could spark war in the country.

    He stressed that government must rise p to protect innocent Nigerians through effective security surveillance particularly at the nation’s borders to prevent illegal immigrants from gaining entry.

    The cleric spoke in Ado Ekiti, the Ekiti State capital at a special service held at First Baptist Church (Miracle Cathedral). The Centenary Estate built by the Ekiti Conference of NBC which is located in Oke Ila area of the town was also commissioned during Ayokunle’s pastoral visit by the Ewi, Oba Adeyemo Adejugbe.

    A book titled: “The History of First Baptist Church, Ado Ekiti” was also launched at the event. It was written by the church’s Historical Committe and was reviewed by the Vice Chancellor of Bowen University, Iwo, Osun State, Prof. Matthew Ojo.

    Ayokunle urged members of the church and Christians in general to be more committed to evangelism and preaching of the gospel saying, “We wouldn’t have had Boko Haram if we had evangelized well.”

    In a sermon entitled: “Moving Forward, Exhibiting the Features of a Prevailing Church”, Ayokunle said the church has a duty to pray for Nigeria to overcome all its social, economic and political problems.

    “There is need to pray more for Nigeria because it is only prayer that can save us. Let us continue to pray for the leadership of this country. But I want to urge the government to check the menace of the herdsmen in some parts of the country.

    “We are calling on the Federal Government to prosecute the hersdmen arrested in connection with the recent killings in Benue and Southern Kaduna because this will ease tension in the two states.

    “We also want the Federal Government to investigate through intelligence gathering those unpatriotic Nigerians supplying the hersdmen with weapons being used to perpetrate evil.

    “If the government fails to stop the provocation of the Fulani (herdsmen), they should be prepared for war. No ethnic group has monopoly of violence and no ethnic group should be a monster to others.”

  • Trump-Putin deal on Crimea could trigger much bigger war – Paul Goble

    By Paul Goble

    Avraam Smulyevich, a leading Israeli specialist on ethnic issues in the former Soviet space, says that Kyiv might be forced to agree to a Trump-Putin deal on Crimea but that such a deal would “only convince the Russian dictator that he had invade other countries without being punished” and thus lead him to launch new wars.

    “Putin himself has acknowledged,” the head of the Israeli Institute for an Eastern Partnership told Kseniya Kirillova in an interview published by Radio Liberty, “that the Syrian war is a training ground for his army and that the state of his army has really improved”.

    The Kremlin leader is “evidently preparing his country for war” in order, among other things, to preserve his own power by launching aggression abroad. The rest of Ukraine is less likely to be in his sights than the Baltic countries, Poland, or “some countries in the South Caucasus such as Azerbaijan.”

    And in the current environment, Shmulyevich says, it is possible that Putin will reach an agreement with Turkey’s Recep Tayyp Erdogan “about the participation of the Middle East or a dash into Central Asia,” a region Ankara has long coveted and one that Moscow would like to rebuilt its power in.

    With regard to a settlement on Crimea, he continues, “the return of Crimea is even more important for some representatives of the West than it is for the ruling Ukrainian elite.” That is because Kyiv wants to end the conflict as soon as possible, while some in the West want to maintain the principle of the inviolability of international borders by force alone.

    That commitment explains the recent UN General Assembly resolution on Crimea, but Shmulyevich says, “it is important to understand that for the majority of the Western establishment, returning Crimea to Ukraine is not as important as simply finding a way to resolve it in a legal fashion.”

    Putin clearly understand this, the Israeli analyst argues, and that explains why he bases his actions on what he says was Khrushchev’s illegal transfer of Crimea from the RSFSR to the Ukrainian SSR and on the fact that the Budapest Memorandum is null and voice because none of its signatories has lived up to its provisions.

    Putin’s people are also arguing that “the Helsinki Accords fixed inter-state and not intra-state borders, and that the state which signed them was not Russia or Ukraine but the Soviet Union.” Indeed, they point out, the only high-level international agreement both Russia and Ukraine have signed was the one creating the UN.

    But from the point of view of Ukraine and the West, that too is a legal argument that undermines their case, Putin thinks, according to Shmulyevich. That is because when the Ukrainian SSR signed the UN treaty, it did not have Crimea within its borders, something other UN members may take note of.

    What is thus likely to happen, he says, is a willingness in Kyiv to accept a deal if it formally keeps Crimea as part of Ukraine even if it does nothing to end Russian occupation, an arrangement unlikely to spark massive protests by Ukrainians given their reluctance so far even to declare war on Russia following Russia’s invasion and seizure of their territory.

    In exchange, if such a deal were to be arranged, Russia would fulfill the Minsk agreements, returning the Donbass de jure but in fact retaining control there through the pro-Russian separatists on the ground who “redressed in Ukrainian uniforms” and with power remaining “in the hands of the local oligarchs.”

    That would be a tragedy for Ukraine, Shmulyevich says; but a far greater tragedy would likely emerge from how Putin would read such a deal, as an indication that the West is not ready to stand up to him and that he can engage in more aggression with impunity.