"Violence: Nigeria requires uncompromising political will" (Guardian Nigeria, Feb 16, 2020) [Inglês]

By Bridget Chiedu Onochie, Abuja

For Nigeria to combat the menace of Boko Haram and other cases of extreme violence, the Brazilian Minister for External Relations, Ernesto Araujo, has said a strong political will is crucial.

Araujo who visited the country recently on bilateral talks on defense, legal, trade and investment, noted that fighting extreme violence does not require any form of compromise with the culprits.

“Some countries, sometimes, face similar challenges and they have the temptation of compromising. There should be no compromise,” he said.

The Minister also identified the need for intelligence gathering to combat the insurgents in a very creative way. “They hide their activities in many ways. So, there is need for permanent sharing of intelligence among border countries to identify the way they are and the way they recruit people.”

Speaking on how Brazil intends to assist Nigeria in combating the activities of the Boko Haram Sect, he said one of the first steps is to tackle cross border drug trafficking.

According to him, his country has realised that drug trafficking activities across the Atlantic comes from Indian countries into Brazil, from Brazil to Africa and from Africa to Europe.

He said: “This drug trafficking helps feed terrorism and Boko Haram in the Sahel and elsewhere. So, we want to address that bilaterally through security cooperation.

“We want to have more coordination to fight corridor drug trafficking from the Gulf of Guinea especially. We are putting whatever we can into it. More people in Brazil have realised that criminal activities, today, are all connected.

“Before now, we had a doctrine that tended to see drug trafficking separately from terrorism and terrorism separate from organised crime and separate from corruption. But now, we see all these as a whole, and it is clear that we have to be partners in the fight, because we are on the two sides of the problem across the South Atlantic.”