Nasir el-Rufai, the former governor of Kaduna State, has issued a cautionary statement to the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), advising against resorting to military intervention in Niger Republic. He expressed the view that any military involvement within the sub-region would essentially amount to a conflict among brethren.
ECOWAS had revealed its intentions to utilize military force as a final recourse if the leaders of the coup in Niger refuse to restore power to the deposed President Mohamed Bazoum.
During a meeting of the bloc’s defense chiefs in Accra, the capital city of Ghana, last Thursday, it was announced that preparations for deploying the standby force in Niger were underway.
While the defense chiefs had endorsed the utilization of dialogue as a means of mediation, they emphasized that all aspects of a potential military intervention had been carefully considered and were currently being fine-tuned.
Reacting to ECOWAS’ plans, El-Rufai on Tuesday tweeted, “As ECOWAS beats the drums of war, I recall the 1970s rock classic by Dire Straits – ‘Brothers in Arms’, because a war within our subregion is a war between brothers.”
