Nigeria must strengthen legislation to curb rising terrorism threats – Centre

The Centre for Fiscal Transparency and Integrity Watch (CefTIW) has called for better legislation to tackle Nigeria’s rising terrorism threats.

The centre through its head of public relations, Victor Agi, stated this while reacting to the latest Global Terrorism Index (GTI) which ranks Nigeria as the 8th (8.065 score) most terrorised country.

“This was as its borders to other countries to the north, east and west have also increasingly become notorious for terrorism, with Niger ranking 10th (7.616), Cameroon and Chad at 11th (7.347) and 19th (6.168) positions respectively, while Benin ranks 28th position (4.840).

“The center is calling for the strengthening and implementation of legal framework as it ensured the passage and signing into law of the Terrorism (Prevention and Prohibition) Act in May 2022. For instance, Part X (Section 63-75) provides measures for investigating and prosecuting terrorism offences. We are, therefore, calling for an aggressive implementation of the law.

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“As we make progress with combative efforts in the fight against insurgency, the country must also up its non-kinetic approach to address the challenges of terrorism.

“More attention should be paid to building peace instead of overreliance on force as the only solution. Necessarily, the government must strengthen institutions, reduce corruption and collusion by state actors, and address the fundamental issue of poverty in order for the country and region to make progress in subsequent rankings,” CefTIW further noted.