Lawan tasks ECOWAS Parliament on terrorism, cross-border crimes

President of the Senate, Ahmad Lawan, has charged the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Parliament to, urgently, address the high incidence of terrorism and irregular migration affecting member-nations.

He also decried pervasive insecurity and cross-border crimes like banditry and kidnapping, which, according to him, “are severe threats to the stability and economic progress of most countries within the West Africa sub-region.”

Lawan made the appeal yesterday in his speech delivered during the 2021 First Ordinary Session of ECOWAS Parliament in Abuja.

He identified insurgency, drug trafficking and ceaseless ethno-religious struggles as problems that “continue to interfere with the freedom of citizens to move between member-nations as guaranteed under the ECOWAS Protocol on Free Movement of Persons and Goods.”

The Senate President, therefore, called on the parliamentarians to seek interventions geared at tackling the lingering challenges.