An Africa Stand-By Force to deal with crises on the continent is on its way following the nod given the proposal yesterday by the two-day Paris summit on peace and security in Africa.
President Goodluck Jonathan hailed the project as a welcome development.
He said at the end of the summit that Nigeria remains committed to global peace keeping and the formation of the specialised force to take control of security challenges in Africa.
The outfit is expected to be in place not later than 2015 to enable the continent take charge of its own security.
President Jonathan said: “We totally support it because we also believe that by having a robust stand-by force, it is much better than the ad-hoc contributions by nations.
“They can mobilise very quickly whenever we have challenges and there is the need to deploy them.
“So, we support it and we thank the president and people of France for supporting Africa in this regard.”
The president said that a stand by force dedicated to conflicts resolution will assist the continent in nipping any crisis in the bud before escalation.
“When you have this stand-by force, they now have an operational order covering the whole of Africa. Anywhere there is conflict, it will not require UN resolution, but a host country’s invitation and an endorsement by the AU,” he added
The Stand-by Force, he said, should be elastic in its composition and contribution by member states of the African Union.
Pointing out that Africa is a major trading partner to France and Europe, he said that the peace in the continent should be of paramount concern to them.
“You cannot have people to trade with if there are crisis. Though you can trade on weapon, but that is just a negative aspect of trade. To have balance of trade and robus economic develop-ment, nations must be at peace.”
The president called on France and the European Union to assist in the formation of the Stand-by Force through capacity building, training and provision of sophisticated equipments..
He said that ECOWAS had a similar force which had assisted in responding to crises in some member states.
“At the beginning of ECOWAS, it was meant to concentrate on economic issues but we have seen that you cannot achieve that without interfering in the internal affairs of member states.
“We realised that you cannot talk about the economy in a very unstable state. State must be stable before you can manage their economy, so whenever we have situation that we need to intervene, we intervene. And that has brought some reasonable stability,” he said.
President Jonathan also said that Nigeria is not considering sending troops to the trouble region of the Central Africa Republic.
According to him, the federal government will consider other form of assistance that could be rendered to the troubled nation.
He noted that apart from the fact that Nigeria has troops in a number of West African countries, it is facing its own security challenges of Boko Haram insurgence. Click to signup for FREE news updates, latest information and hottest gists everyday
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The proposal it’s a clear indication that African leaders are expecting crisis within the region because majority of them are evil and that is why it might be difficult for peace to reign.
ReplyDeletePresident GEJ has to support the initiative if not him that even suggested the idea because, he knows that a reasonable % of those voted him in to power are regretting besides, people dislike PDP with passion for the fact that reasonable Nigerians belief that there is nothing good can come out of PDP yet PDP are still planning to rig elections come 2014 when he GEJ knows that it will never be a business as usual; it can’t be easy and the possibility of this standby forces plus his own standby Army under the command of Gen Mojaheed Asari is obvious though, Nigerians are patiently waiting.
I never thought someone like Nelson Mandela can subscribe to standby Peace Forces because, no matter what, he has to do the right things. However, If Election malpractices, oppressions, Corruptions, etc are shunned by our leaders I hope peace will reign otherwise, I am afraid.