Media, international community obstructing anti-terror war

Media, international community obstructing anti-terror war –NSA

February 4, 2015

National Security Adviser, Col. Sambo Dasuki

The office of the National Security Adviser to President Goodluck Jonathan has blamed the Nigerian media and the international community for the setback in the Federal Government’s fight against insurgency in the country.

The NSA’s office however admitted that failure of the government to set up “the fusion centre or the counter-terrorism centre” headed by the NSA had been hampering the functions of the office.

The counter-terrorism centre, according to an official in the NSA’s office, Col. Bello Fadile, is supposed to analyse intelligence, coordinate the activities of security agencies and apportion tasks to the appropriate organisations.

Fadile said the Central Bank of Nigeria had agreed to fund the project and that a location had been provided for the project but that the final processing required for the take-off was still pending at the office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation.

He accused the international community of bias in its assessment of government’s approach to the fight against terrorism and the Nigerian media of non-nationalistic reportage of the developments in the war.

He spoke in Abuja on Tuesday at a seminar to raise capacity within the criminal justice system.

He said that the international community continued to make so much noise about rights violations in the North-East region, home to Boko Haram insurgency, but that the same international community only gave scant attention to more heinous rights violations taking place in some other nations that were also fighting terrorism.

Fadile said the Federal Government’s “soft approaches” strategy to prevent recruitment of more members for the insurgent group “is not being effective because we don’t have the media”.

“The media is one of our major problems. We have to be nationalistic. They (the media) can help us. Why do we have more attention on rights violations in Nigeria? Why the double standard from the international community? Nobody is talking of human rights violations in Syria and other places,” he said.

He wondered why it was difficult for the developed nations to block the posting of Boko Haram videos on the internet, adding that much more international attention was being given to ISIS than the terrorists in Nigeria.

“Why is that anything about Boko Haram easily gets online? Why can’t they help us to block it?” he queried.

The Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Mr. Mohammed Adoke, noted in his keynote address that “striking a delicate balance between the demands of human rights and national security” always constituted a grave concern in every nation that fought anti-terrorism war.

Adoke, who was represented by one of his Senior Special Assistants, Prof. Peter Akper, however said “the arrest and arraignment process, including the question of remand of suspected terrorists require a delicate balance between constitutional liberties and national security.”