 The 2021 Global Peace Index has ranked Nigeria 146 among 163 independent nations and territories according to its level of peacefulness. Nigeria moved one step from 147 in 2020, though it still ranked eighth among the least peaceful countries in Africa after South Sudan, Somalia and the Democratic Republic of Congo, Libya, Central African Republic, Sudan and Mali. In the report released, Nigeria finished with 2,712 points and was graded lower on the state of peace. Describing the situation, the report said that Nigeria continues to face challenges in safety and security, saying the conflict between government forces and Burkaw Haram in the Northeast led to the killing of about 1,000 people in 125 fatal incidents in 2020, making the average of 13 deaths per violent event in Burkaw Haram insurgency of last year. Joining us to discuss this is Agar Obo. He is a foreign affairs expert and Doni Ogwemi is a rotary peace fellow. Thank you very much ladies and gentlemen for joining us. Agar, I'll start with you because you obviously understand the situation across the Sahel and the reason why some of these countries around the Sahel keep having this issue of insecurity and how they have been able to handle it and then we'll bring it to Nigeria. So, there's an arm struggle. I mean, I remember last year I talked about something that happened in Burkina Faso. Burkina Faso had to deal with the three-pronged problem. They dealt with insecurity, they were dealing with some form of farming and they also had to deal with COVID-19. Just give us a brief idea as to what's happening in the Sahel and how it's affecting us here in Nigeria. So, I said the Sahel has been in trouble for several years now. If you take back 20 years ago when the drought and the farming and desertification began to affect to a large extent most parts of the Sahel. The countries around this Sahel haven't done much for those years. Rather than work and look for secondary solutions to resolving the problems instead of dragging their feet on many of those issues. And it would worsen the situation, have to do a lot also with political instability together with environmental problems facing several parts of the Sahel. So, if you take your mind back, a typical case study where you look at what is going on with the Lake Chad Basin. Lake Chad Basin from 1960 to date has lost about 90% of its coverage area. And if you look at the satellite images from 1960 and then you take it back into today, you see that millions of people who have depended on the Lake Chad Basin for survival have now become refugees because they cannot farm, they cannot fish. And then what has also worsened the situation for many of them also too, is you've had the, because of their basic means of survival, has been taken away from them. It means now that the poverty levels they have increased significantly. All Nigeria needs to, if you look at the global peace index from 2008 till date, you see that Nigeria hasn't really improved. We've moved from 242, the best they may be 213, 240, 241, 240. And all of this coincides with what's happening in the North Eastern part of the country. So you see, it just shows you that no real work has been done in resolving many of those issues beginning. First with the environmental issues which have now began to affect the economic situation in most of these countries in the Sahel. I want to push you further because you have said that nothing has really been done. So does it mean that political will has been the issue in all of those areas around the Sahel, including Nigeria? You're saying that there's much more of talking and reporting than the political will to deal with the situation in the Sahel. Is that it? Exactly, take Nigeria as a case study. If you look at most of the development indices running back from the 90s into 2000, you see a ticking time bomb in the way the numbers have risen. Numbers of children who are out of school, you find the major in those areas, those who don't have access to good health care, who don't have access to education health care and good infrastructure, there's so much on governed area in many of these places. So you see not being able to deal with these problems, you find out that you find the same problems, play out across most part of the Sahel in Niger, in Chad and the government that have been there perpetuated themselves in office some way to solve the problem by saying, even if we cannot provide the basic necessities, we can throw away the jagg boots and barrier and wear the abadda or the suits like in Chad's case where Idris Debi was there from the 90s. The irony is that what Debi had sought to strike out of Chad, for example, is what ended up killing him. I mean if you've been there for multi decades and at the end of the day, you're going to have to lose your life to an ambulance surgeon. It just shows you that not much work has really been done in terms of using the primary solutions to solve a primary problem. So we need to get back to the basics and dealing with what the real problems are with the countries in the Sahel. Beyond getting the guns and all of that to kick away poverty, it's never worked. The gun boats have never driven away poverty. They would have to invest critically in education, in healthcare, in the provision of jobs and an environment that people can find and strive to earn a good living. Let me go to Doni. Doni, you have worked with Rotary and you have been part of some peace committees. I'm guessing that you are aware of what Nigeria is going through. Agogol has outlined all of the problems and where we have loopholes. As someone who is a peace fellow, you obviously would have some solutions that we can maybe take advantage of or maybe our leaders might be willing to listen to. But in all of your research, what do you think can be the solution or a starting point in addressing the situation that we're having, especially here in Nigeria, because it's really bad if Africa's most populated country and the supposed big brother is facing what it is facing today. The deep dive of the Naira, the fact that the economy is in some shambles. The cost of living is rising high, robbery, kidnapping. The list is endless. Where do we start from? I'll take it from where he's left off. We ended by saying enough of the guns and now it's time to begin to do on something more preventing. So what we look like the government has been doing in terms of approach is trying to contain violence rather than prevent it. Preventing it takes a lot more effort than just going there and trying to stop it with force. Using that hard power that they continue to do. So back to the basics, the major cause for poverty, the poverty 40% or more Nigerians are experiencing at the moment is that they do not have access to livelihood. And as long as that remains, the youth will remain restless and they will take to streets, they will take to violence, they will take to anything that can bring that. So the first thing will be improve the economy via investing in people and investing in the environment in which they live and work and schooling. I also want to talk about security. I mean there's just, we cannot begin to talk about how bad security situation is now. So when you put the fact that there are young people there that can work, that affects security in itself. And insecurity itself also affects the ability to get good jobs and to work freely. And so all of this is just a vicious cycle. And the other thing is people having that sense that there is justice, you know, that there is some equitability in terms of resource that is available to people. As long as that gap is still so wide between who is rich and who is poor, I mean we're going to continue to have this kind of situation. So rather than use the go on to prevent protests in the last June 12, we had the government coming out to say that the police was going to be on the streets, they're not going to allow this. And we saw it happen. You know, what would have been better is diplomacy to call people to the table and say, what are the problems? How can we begin to solve the problems? Okay, where can we take it from? What is the road map? How do we ensure people are educated? How do we ensure they are skilled? How do we ensure that they have leadership ability and they have a sound business environment? You know, you don't begin to make things tougher and tougher, especially for young people. And that's really where Rotary comes into ensuring that key things like health, key things like economy, they're looking into it by building leadership skills among young people and women. I'm a beneficiary of the Rotary Peace Fellowship, for instance. And so many others are working in different ways. But apart from organisations like Rotary, we need the government to step in and begin to do good work. And I want to jump in there to quickly ask you because you're saying you've given us, you know, likely solutions and what government needs to focus its attention to. Government has come up with, you know, all kinds of programmes in the name of trying to lift people out of poverty. The president came out the other day to say he's lifted about 10 million people out of poverty. We're yet to see those people anyway, so that's still questionable. But as a Rotary Peace Fellow, and I'm sure that you've seen several committees that are advocating for things to be done differently. What's been the response of government, especially the government of Nigeria, to these ideas that you've brought to the table? Have they been receptive? Have they taken any of these into consideration? Well, it may be fair to say perhaps they want to take into consideration, but it's a bit of scratching the surface. So rather than say that we want to employ 1,000 young people with 774 local government over three months, that will not lift anybody. If you pay them for the three months and it's over, that will not lift people out of poverty. Lifting people out of poverty will make sure that public institutions where the children of the common man can afford to go. It remains renders quality service, both in education and health. In education and health, as long as it is not within the reach of that regular person, common man, then the government has not started. So they need to put funding more in those areas and we're not seeing it. I'm bouncing back to you. There's the saying that there are people who always benefit from these types of situations, insecurity, war. There are people who'd rather not this war's end because they are benefiting from it. I'll take your mind back to all the way to 2017 when we started seeing guns coming into the country, no one's claiming them. The most recent was I think 2018 or 2019. These guns keep coming, but nobody's able to trace. We've not had any intel till today as to where these guns are coming from. One was stopped by in South Africa, another was traced back to Turkey and it keeps coming back and forth. And you know how expensive a gun is. So the fact that we are seeing our government unable to deal with the situation, even though we keep talking about the lack of political will. Other people who are benefiting from this who supposedly might be also part of the government or politicians. And that's why this is not going away anytime soon. Absolutely. It's not going away anytime soon because a lot of what is going on is out of the hands of the state actors. If you take your mind back to 2011 when Mumal Gaddafi was in charge of BBA, he had a band of fighters from all across the Sahel who, as missionaries, came to fight for him. Many of those guys after Gaddafi's outstair found their way back to their home countries to cost mayhem in those countries. In fact, you can trace the radicalisation, swift radicalisation of Boko Haram, back to the after Gaddafi years and the problems you also had in Mali. Most of those weapons were there. So if you don't have a regional sort of force which can man the Sahel where you have this criminal elements and non-state actors, which I do say they keep growing in numbers. The fact that it has one like at Rokkesha Caerbun, who is now being killed by SWAP is one sign of relief to a number of people. But who is the bigger problem? Because the SWAP, which is the group responsible for his outstair according to reports we are getting, have now a foothold over the north-eastern part of the country. And then knowing what they did in the middle is they could pose a more formidable danger with a lot of connection and network. There's the AQI. So the Sahel is just what she's saying is just sitting right there in the garden to be blocked. Unfortunately, the countries of Bodin the Sahel haven't done much in that regard to stop this. The president even admitted in that Nigerian president that he shot the borders but yet the weapons still came in. Coming in. So it means that closing the borders still won't give you put a stop to those weapons. Then unaccounted Gaddafi weapons continue to roam freely across the Sahel and into any country. It's a game of the weakest link, any country that is territorial border forces and strong enough to stop them. They'll find their way in. Algeria chased them back into the desert and so they found their way in countries like Mali, Chad and Nigeria, unfortunately. Well, on that sad note, I want to say thank you to you. Algar Obal is an international news expert and of course I want to say thank you to you. Doenny Ogwemi for being part of the conversation. She's a Rotary Peace fellow. Thank you, lady and gentlemen for being part of the conversation. Thank you very much. All right. Well, on that note, we say thank you for being part of the show tonight. We'll see you on Monday on Plus Politics. I am Mary Anna Cohn. Have a good evening.