News:
September 20, 2019
A member of the Nigerian delegation to the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Parliament, Sodiq Ibrahim has called on Nations within European Union (EU) to help curb smuggling of small arms into the West African sub-region.
According to Sodiq Ibrahim, West Africa is the poorest region on earth hence the need for assistant to curb the practice.
He made this call in Monrovia, Liberia when Speaker of the West African Community Parliament, Rt. Honorable Mustapha Cisse Lo led a delegation of lawmakers from the Community Parliament to interact with the diplomatic mission in that country after their seminar.
“We cannot go to our farms, neither can we go about carrying out trade and other occupations on our roads simply because of attacks from weapons that African countries did not manufacture”, he lamented.
Mr. Sodiq Ibrahim called for sanctions to be given out to companies in Europe that export “these arms to non-state actors in Africa”.
“The smuggling of arms is making us poor, making us force to cross the Sahara, and making us also cross the Mediterranean, where we become victims of some of the actions of European Imperialisms”.
He called for an action to address the crisis which has made citizens of the West African sub-region, “victims in their own countries”.
Kwaku Sakyi-Danso/ghanamps.com