Road to Khartoum

Within a matter of hours, Southern Sudan will join the comity of independent nations, bringing their number to 196. No doubt, this region of Sudan has undergone horrible experiences as well as efforts to bring about peace in the land. The culmination of the various attempts in a mutually acceptable peace agreement is therefore a remarkable achievement.

Sudan's peace is not without the involvement of Nigeria. The latter invested men and materials in Sudan to jinx the long-running conflict.

Arguably, of all Africa's violent civil wars, none has proved elusive at resolving like the decades long civil conflicts
that ravaged the Sudan. The history of the conflicts of Sudan is strewn with a plethora of failed attempts at brokering lasting peace. Most of the negotiations that had evolved, in the cause of bringing peace to Sudan, had centered on how to manage the complexities and the dualistic identity that remained the major feature of Sudanese politics and conflicts.


First, it was the Juba Conference of 1947  which attempted to negotiate a political union between Northern and Southern Sudan. Then the comprehensive Peace Agreement of 2005, which brought to an end the second phase of the North-South war.


Many peace processes were embarked upon by the parties to conflict in Sudan with assistance and support from 
various third parties within and outside the African continent. The peace processes consumed enormous human and material resources, and witnessed the greatest involvement, both state and non-state, bilateral and multilateral, mediators from within and outside Africa.


Based on her record of pro-active engagement in the cause of peace in Africa, Nigeria has for a long time been
a major stakeholder in the Sudanese peace process. Successive governments in Nigeria have been strongly
involved in efforts at finding lasting solutions to the civil wars in Sudan. Twice, Nigeria hosted peace conferences 
on Sudan.

It was not the first time that Nigeria played a big brother role. In Angola, Mozambique, Congo, Liberia, Sierra-
Leone, Cote d'Ivore, Rwanda and Burundi, former apartheid South Africa and Namibia, Nigeria invested huge resources.

You then begin to wonder what Nigeria is trying to achieve when it's also faced with conditions that precipitated civil conflicts in those countries it is trying to help out. Nigeria itself fought a three-year civil war from 1967-1970 with hundreds of thousands lives lost.

Nigeria was deeply involved in the making of the Addis Ababa peace Agreement of 1972 on Sudan , even though she was not a major mediator. Until the agreement finally collapsed, Nigeria in collaboration with the then Organization of African Unity (OAU) was at the forefront of efforts to bring the warring sides in Sudan back to the negotiating table. Since the inception of the Inter-Governmental and Authority Developent (IGAD) Peace Process, Nigeria stayed committed to the IGAD collaborators and partners in resolving the long-running conflict.

Throughout former President Olusegun Obasanjo's administration, he vigorously pursued the realization of the Sudance peace process. His election as the African Union Chair further gave him the opportunity to step up efforts in search of lasting peace in Sudan.  Mr. Obasanjo it was who appointed former Nigeria head of State, Gen. Abdulsalam Abubakar as his special envoy to Sudan and Chad on the Dafur conflict.

Both under the then African Union Mission in Sudan (AMIS) and the present United Nations African Union Mission in Sudan, Nigeria had the largest number of troops in Sudan.

What is the cost of achieving peace in Sudan for Nigeria? How many Nigerian troops have died in the cause of keeping peace in Sudan? Do Nigerians know? Is the Nigerian governement telling its citizenry? The answer is a big NO. Nigerian government feels less obligated to let its own people know what it costs them to play the big brother role in Sudan. Nigeria is the proverbial physician who wants to heal others when it can not heal herself. Just as oil is a curse in the war-torn Sudan, so it is a curse in Nigeria. You only need to see the human traffic at petrol stations in Nigeria for demostic cooking parafin otherwise known as kerosine used by more than 90 per cent of low income families to cook. This is not to mention poor infrastructure such as epileptic electricity, lack of clean drinking water, sanitary hospitals, equipped classrooms and hassle-free public transportation.

Everyday in Nigeria, Islamic fundamentalists under the aegis of Boko Haram kill innocent Nigerians. The other day, a bomb had gone off at the Nigerian Police headquarters, killing two people and destroying several cars. Members of the group routinely carry out attacks on police stations in some Northern states in the country with the latest being the attack and looting of a police station in Bauchi where the fundamentalists helped themselves to weapons.

Concerned by the insecurity of lives and property in the nation, media editors in Nigeria have urged President Goodluck Jonathan to urgently address the problem of security. Bombings, assasinations and kidnappings are hallmarks of daily life in Nigeria. The culmination of insecurity, ethnic and religious distrust, socio-economic injustices and inequalities is civil conflicts. Many African nations have been through such conflicts including Nigeria. Can Nigeria afford to travel the Sudanese road again?