by Christiana Gokyo, Jos
The Lake Chad Basin economy has been adjudged to remain the cornerstone of crises prevention in the region.
This assertion was made by Professor Saibou Issa, who is professor of History, International Relations and Security Studies of the University of Maroua, Cameroon, at the 28th Convocation Lecture held at the Modibbo Adama University (MAU), Yola.
At the lecture, the University Don titled his lecture as, ‘The Need for a Collective Response: a Recurrent Security and Development Challenges.’
He said, “It appears, from the above that, the vulnerability of the strategic basin has been built over time. The weak presence of state and the fragilities of traditional production system have allowed the informal sector and network and circuits of change services to flourish, as cross-border solidarity of adjacent regions around Lake Chad has been built.
He noted that, “Because it is the main source of violence – whether it takes the form of conflicts between groups of development, defense and security – is, therefore, essential to the stabilization of the region.”
Professor Issa observed that, the Lake Chad Basin is a contact society where mobility determines most socioeconomic activities, conveys renews and consolidates social linkages, criminal entrepreneurship. Inter-agencies competitions for access to natural resources and state security responses are often located along side mobility facilities.
He recalled that, “Since the late 1980s, the same category of borders ‘practitioners’ and some border governance failure have reproduced insecurity and economic swings. That it is necessary to break with strategic procrastination, consolidate cross-borders economic and administrative nodes and encourage regional institutional and scientific perspectives.”
Issa defined that, “The current crises must be an opportunity for transaction of the Lake Chad Basin. It is privacy of globality over strategic and economic autarchy that will collectively respond to the regionalization of the challenges.”
He noted that, “For a theory of conflict sedimentation, I am willing to admit that poverty is a central determinant of the propensity to resort to opportunistic violence. But, with Cameroon’s border with Nigeria, young people who have voluntarily joined Boko Haram are mainly recruits among those whom Karine Brennafla calls ‘border practitioners.’”
He emphasized that, “Activities such as retail trade, smuggling, mechanical repairs, handling, guarding, etc., provide them with parameter income; although, sometimes insufficient and life trajectory traced by mimicry and profitability of cross-border trade.”
Prof Issa revealed thus, …to “trace the cycles of crises and restart this reality, I recalled times in my writing, partly explains the socioeconomic stagnation of border areas, even though they are equipped with means of production.”
The foreign Don indeed said, earlier, “Border markets are regional commercial hubs whose prosperity has frequently been undermined by frequency of armed attacks on economic operators, who have sometimes gone bankrupt.”