The Rosa Luxemburg Foundation West Africa has called for fresh strategies to tackle insecurity in Nigeria saying persistent attacks by kidnappers bandits and other criminal groups have made road travel increasingly dangerous.
The foundation’s representative Angela Odah made the call on Thursday at its conference on Peace and Conflict Resolution in Nigeria themed Rethinking Strategies for Sustainable Peace in Abuja.
She said insecurity had spread across the country’s geopolitical zones with rural communities in Northern Nigeria facing persistent attacks that had displaced many residents into internally displaced persons camps for over a decade.
Odah lamented that Nigerians could no longer enjoy the freedom of travelling by road without fear of abduction and ransom demands.
‘In the last twelve years or more these simple pleasures of life have become a dangerous adventure with kidnappers bandits and all kinds of criminal gangs on the prowl to capture Nigerians and demand ransoms’ she said.
She described sustainable peace as critical to development noting that the foundation had supported research and dialogue to promote democratic participation and peaceful coexistence across communities and countries.
Odah cited a regional conference on political crises in West Africa held in Abidjan Côte d’Ivoire on September 23 and 24 and a Change Makers Programme organised in collaboration with the Johannesburg Holocaust and Genocide Centre and the University of Ghana in Accra from October 5 to 7.
She said the Abuja conference was designed as a national dialogue that would be sustained annually over the next three years to assess Nigeria’s peace and security situation and develop recommendations for lasting peace.
The foundation a German political organisation active in West Africa since 2010 focuses on democratic participation peace and security climate and economic justice migration justice and feminism.