TRANSNATIONAL INSURGENCY AND TERRORISM IN AFRICA: ISSUES AND TASKS FOR REGIONAL INTEGRATION
Odeyemi Oluwole Jacob
Department Of History and International Studies
Ajayi Crowther University, Oyo, Oyo state, Nigeria
Email: Odeyemioluwole6@gmail.com
Abstract
That Africa is beleaguered is non-alarmist. Spiraling-down from Cairo to Cape, the entire region undergoes episodic crippling from the viral presence of insurgencies, xenophobic and terror groups operating with transnational morbidity. With most having questionable grievances, multiple bands of marauders intermixed with sectarians and political renegades; concertedly using asymmetric attacks and marauding tactics; thriving on wide-ranging criminality. They traverse multiple borders to merchandise crude terror, ‘acts of pure evil’, genocide and displacements; rolling back investments, cowing civilians, confounding national armies and rattling governments. The failed-state plague across Africa had predisposed these millennial menaces, setting the continent adrift. The work examines the prevalence of insecurity cropping from transnational insurgency and terrorism and its impact on African economic development and integration. The paper observes, evidentially, the stultifying of African agendas on economic development and integration (including the MDGs), with strained states U-turning from progressive governance to dissipating energies on crises management, and diverting chunk budgetary provisions into combating insecurity. As African States and Union scamper for external interventions, the myth is betrayed, again, of African solutions to African problems. These are not times for negritude. The paper proves that African integration, ab initio, was a ruse and had cusped in this pervasive insecurity. It contends, with suggested solutions, if Africa must develop and retrieve from monumental tragedy impendent of the current transnational insurgency, the task is apparently urgent. African leaders and regional integrators must reevaluate, reconceptualise, and re-strategize alongside the issues here-raised. Reasonably, the secrets of effective nation-building, regional integration and developmental futures embed in-house Africa, in committed multiple policy departures, and not in neocolonial interventions.