Niger coup: Tinubu may play into hands of Boko Haram

Nigeria’s representative to the ECOWAS parliament, Senator Emmanuel Yisa Orker-Jev, has cautioned on a military solution to the coup in the Republic of Niger.

In an exclusive interview with The Guardian, the immediate past Senate committee Vice Chairman on Judiciary who represented Benue North West rather advised on diplomacy to the Nigerien impasse.

Senator Jev who is currently representing the country at the ECOWAS parliament says that President Bola Tinubu may play into the hands of terrorists like the Boko Haram if ECOWAS insist on a military solution.

“We have problems of our own. We have not been able to subdue Boko Haram within our borders. It may cause more problems for us if we have people across the borders colluding with Boko Haram”, he said.

Senator Orker Jev said that the ECOWAS parliament held an emergency meeting last week and took the decision that “ECOWAS should not be dragged into a military confrontation with the copists”.

According to the parliamentarian, “in any military confrontation with the junta in Niger, Nigeria will bear the brunt because ECOWAS is funded 70 percent by Nigeria. In a confrontation, you would be sure that 70 percent of the funding will come from Nigeria and 70 percent of the manpower from Nigeria “.
He said that many of the Francophone countries are going” the coup way” and rather than wait for the coups to take place before we start to intervene, what ought to be done was to sit back and look at those things that are giving rise to coups in order to avoid them and put a permanent stop to the malaise.