TheCable

President Muhammadu Buhari has challenged his counterparts on the continent on the need to put an end to wars and other forms of conflicts in Africa.

According to Femi Adesina, special adviser to the president on media and publicity, Buhari said this in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, while speaking on the African Union’s vision to reduce preventable conflict-related deaths in the continent by 2020.

Emphasizing the developmental challenges confronting the continent, Buhari lamented the use of scarce resources on armed conflicts rather than on the economic and social development of the continent.

He said the killings must stop now, rather than wait till 2020.

“We have all shed blood for Africa to be free, but the irony is that, today, we are now killing one another,” he said.

“Rather than facing the developmental challenges confronting us, we are spending our scarce resources killing our children and inflicting unspeakable horrors and unimaginable hardship on our brothers and sisters.

“That is truly a tragedy and it must stop.  Enough is Enough!

“Within the framework of the African Union, we have to, as a matter of urgency, reach a consensus on how to silence the guns. Not by 2020 but now.

“Why must we wait? We must say ‘no’ to wars and conflicts on our continent. We, in Nigeria, have always been attached to the idea of African unity.

“During the struggle to win freedom for our brothers and sisters in Angola, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, and Zimbabwe, Nigeria was considered a front-line State, although we were not geographically on the frontline.

“This was because we took to heart the words of President Ben Bella of Algeria that we all had to die a little for all our brothers and sisters on the continent.”