ECOWAS must lead efforts to fight terrorist groups – Dr. Anning

daniel russell

August 27, 2015 10:02 AM

His comments came on the back of reports that a KNUST graduate, Nazir Alema has travelled to join terrorist group, Islamic state in Iraq.

Dr. Kwesi Anning

Security expert, Dr. Anning has called on the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) to lead efforts at preventing terrorist groups from making the sub region a recruiting hub.

His comments came on the back of reports that a Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) graduate, Nazir Alema has travelled to join terrorist group, Islamic state in Iraq.

“When people talk about this young man joining ISIS, I think most people have a tendency that he might have gone to Syria or Iraq. But my argument is that since Boko Haram declared itself a caliphate and ISIS also declared Boko Haram in West Africa a province of ISIS strategy, it’s most probable that this gentleman is either in Cameroon, Nigeria, Chad, even Eastern Nigeria,” Dr. Anning told .

“The IS/Boko Haram alliance has become a major security threat to the whole of the sub-region and I think all ECOWAS member states and ECOWAS itself must lead the struggle to ensure radicalisation tendencies are reduced as much as possible,” he added.

Dr. Anning also advised that Ghana changes the strategy of its security agencies in order to stop young people from joining terrorist groups.

“There are several things that we need to do. One is building a better community security relations through which trust can be rebuilt and in which the approach of making everything confidential secret for your eyes only is shifted to say, ‘this is a new type of threat that actually undermines your livelihoods, threatens family, threatens communities that we have to work together as one’”, he said.

“The second is to have a much more nuance understanding of the type of transformative or changing security environment within which we find ourselves. In West Africa, it’s no more static, it’s fluid, it transforms itself very quickly and appeals to people who may not necessarily be poor,” Dr Anning suggested.

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daniel russell