The Executive Director of the West Africa Centre for Counter Extremism (WACCE), Mutaru Mumuni Muqthar has said the timing for reopening the country’s land borders was wrong following tensions in four neighboring countries.
Speaking on ‘The Pulse’ on Joy News today, he noted considering the spillover effect of violence in the region, it was a very dangerous move to open the land borders.
According to him, the tensions in neighboring countries such as Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Togo, Benin and Cote D’Ivoire is as a result of a spillover effect since violent extremists only seek to expand their coverage.
He noted that troubling Bawku is very close to Burkina Faso which has been hit by terrorists and therefore the reopening of the land borders was quite worrisome.
“If you look at the threat of violence and extremism from the Sahel towards the coastal space and if you look at what the spillover effect of violence in the region is, it tells you that this is a very dangerous time to open the borders especially when you do not have some level of escalation of security commitment to help in terms of preventing some spillover from Burkina Faso.
“What is happening in Burkina Faso is as a result of a spillover effect from Mali and Mali to some effect is a product of what happened in Libya.
“Today, as we speak the threat of violent extremism, is pervasive towards the coastal space and we are seeing an increasing level of attacks on the Northern border of Cote D’Ivoire, Benin and Togo. Ghana is the only country in this space that is yet to experience attacks and we have to believe that we are not in any way immune to attacks from any quarter and if you consider the proximity of Bawku it tells you that this is a very vulnerable state we are in,” he stated.
