By Abiola Olawale
Eminent Scholar-Diplomat, former Nigeria’s Foreign Affairs Minister, and erstwhile United Nations Under-Secretary-General, Professor Ibrahim Agboola Gambari, has proferred insights on the root challenges confronting African leaders in building lasting peace and secutity throughout the continent.
Gambari, a former Chief of Staff to immediate past President Muhammadu Buhari, and first and only African to serve as United Nations Under-Secretary General(Political), a pivotal role delineated in the UN Charter, offered his analysis in Kigali, the Rwanda capital recently where he highlighted the complexities and barriers that have historically hindered the achievement of enduring peace and security in Africa.
Recall that Africa, a continent of over 1.4 billion people and 54 diverse nations, continues to grapple with violent conflicts, insurgencies, and political instability.
However, while speaking on the situation and dynamics shaping these challenges, Gambari drew from his insights from decades of experience in global diplomacy and conflict resolution, pointing to systemic issues such as institutional shortcomings, and geopolitical complexities as factors that have combined to hinder the expected improvement in peace and security architecture in Africa.
He explained this development while speaking with the press at the sideline of the inaugural meeting of the International Security Conference on Africa (ISCA) in Rwanda.
He said: “First is to look at security as human security. People tend to look at security as physical security. You can have a country physically secure, but the people are insecure.
“So it’s about the security of the human being with so many dimensions, economic security, political security, environmental security.
“The impact of all of that on the human being is important.
“The second is that, again, we have to look at security not as separate from development, not separate from democratization and good governance.
“You may have peace, but you cannot sustain peace without development, and you will not have sustainable development without political stability, so peace, security, development, and good governance should be linked and not regarded in isolation.”
Gambari who was at various times Nigeria’s Ambassador/ Permanent Representative to the United Nations, New York, Joint Special Representative of the United Nations and the African Union/Chief Mediator in Darfur, and President of the United Nations Security Council, further stated that political dependence, economic dependence and challenge of good governance are among the reasons efforts towards sustainable peace in Africa have not yielded the desired results.
He maintained that poor governance lies at the heart of Africa’s security challenges. According to him, several African countries have seen governance decline over the past decade, creating fertile ground for unrest.
He explained that weak state institutions, corruption, and lack of accountability erode public trust, often leading to coups and insurgencies.
Gambari, the founder of the Savannah Centre for Diplomacy, Democracy & Development (SCDDD), also explained that to build sustainable peace in Africa, all countries must join hands together.
He said sustainable peace requires the inclusion of local authorities, sub-national groups, and civil society.
The scholar-diplomat also pointed out that regional bodies such as ECOWAS must improve their capacity to manage crises.
Giving an account of previous efforts by African leaders in the past, Gambari said: “We didn’t have the Organization of African Unity until the middle of the 1960s which was the decade of independence.
“Then we realized that the OAU, as you know, was almost just an alliance of leaders. It didn’t sufficiently address the totality of the interests of the peoples of the continent, and the organization was not enough.
“Then the next generation of leaders thought of the next step, which is to move from the Organization of African Unity to linking economic development with political independence.
“This led to the creation of the African Union where you surrender some sovereignty to promote the greater good of the people, both in terms of political security, political independence, with economic integration.
“By this decade, African leaders realized again that political independence was not enough, and economic cooperation was not enough.
“We have realized the need to have good governance, how we are governed. This is because of the absence of good governance, the low performance of the economy, and the fact that the dividends, even of democratic independence, were not clear.
“Now, this left them to begin to think of “what is the meeting component?”.
“Ultimately, it’s about good governance, where the dividends will be felt by the ordinary people, where the people will be secured, politically, economically, and even in terms of environmental security.
“So you have various phases of interest and response to the challenges over the decades. But what is constant is the recognition now that no country in Africa, no country in the world, let alone in Africa, can do it alone, can succeed alone in meeting the demands and the needs of their people in this broad definition of human security and the linkage between peace and security, between economic development and good governance.”
