The presidential candidate for the African Action Congress (AAC), Omoyele Sowore, outlined his plans for addressing security concerns in Nigeria.
He stated that, if elected in 2023, he would adopt a selective approach to tackling the challenges faced by different regions of the country.
Sowore said this while speaking during an interview on Channels Television, on Tuesday.
The presidential hopeful also acknowledged the ongoing agitation for an independent Biafran state led by the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) in the South-east and the activities of Niger Delta militants who have been accused of attacking crude oil pipelines in the South-south.
He also mentioned the issue of banditry in the North-West and Northeast and the demands for an independent Yoruba nation by the group Ilana Omo Oodua in the Southwest.
Sowore said, if elected Nigeria’s president in 2023, he would evolve different approaches that will address such “peculiar security challenges and concerns” across the country.
“As the president of Nigeria, I will look at all these areas and bring out what will fit their own peculiar security challenges.
“For the South-east (Biafra agitation), it will be dialogue. For the bandits, it will be stick (force). For the militants, it will be further dialogue and how to fix their environments and issues making these militants come together,” he said.
Sowore said Nigeria has been battling security challenges because of injustice meted out to some regions of the country.
“If you had done justice to the South-east after the civil war, for instance, nobody will be agitating for Biafra,” he said.
The AAC candidate said that the lack of socio-economic justice in Nigeria which has resulted in multidimensional poverty was responsible for the “dislocations” being witnessed in the country.
“Mostly importantly, without solving the socio-economic problems of our people, we can’t get the kind of security that we need.”
He suggested that the vandalisation of crude oil pipelines and crude oil theft by suspected militants in the south-south region were responsible for the declining oil production in the country.
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