PDP Chieftain to British envoy – foreign partnership will help fight insecurity
By Kingsley Chukwuka
A Chieftain of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), has challenged the British envoy to Nigeria, James Duddridge on the assertion that foreign partnership will not be needed to end the ongoing security challenges in the country.
The PDP heavy weight in Plateau State, Mr. Jonathan Akuns said Nigeria should in no other time need international support other than now.
Recall that the British Minister for Africa, James Duddridge, recently described Nigeria’s security situation as massively complex, saying no partnership would resolve the multiplicity of the country’s problems.
Duddridge had started this while fielding questions from newsmen in Abuja during his courtesy visit to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Geoffrey Onyeama.
Duddridge had said “the situation is massively complex and no partnership is going to resolve the multiplicity of problems whether it is Boko Haram or a number of other issues”.
Reacting however, Akuns described the British envoy’s comment as tacitly misguiding and surreptitiously deceptive, saying, now is the auspicious need for humanitarian support for a partnership of world powers akin to those cited to resolve the insidious security problems of Nigeria.
Akuns noted that advancements in science and technology in different fields of human endeavour have vitiated reliance on the need to revisit the missing cryptic initial conditions for amalgamation which Britain failed to put up.
“It will be a tragedy for 21st century world powers to allow Nigeria to go the path of defunct Yugoslavia/Czechoslovakia rather than that of the USA/China/India as successful plural societies”, he said.
Akuns said this is the time to convene the much awaited partnership of world powers to salvage Nigeria, adding that the time is now and if not Britain, who will champion the convening of such partnership, he said
Our correspondent however reports that the Senate President, Ahmad Lawan, who also received Duddridge sought the support of the British Government to address Nigeria’s security challenges.
Duddridge was at the National Assembly in company of the British High Commissioner to Nigeria, Catriona Laing.
“We believe that our country, our government has to do a lot to secure the people, their lives and their property and this is the time that all our friends across the world need to support us, give us the kind of support that we need”, the Senate President said.
