Nigeria threatens to withdraw peacekeepers from U.N. missions
August 2, 2010 (KHARTOUM) — The Nigerian president Goodluck Jonathan threatened on Monday to withdraw his country’s troops taking part in the United Nations peacekeeping missions worldwide.
“A situation where militia groups would ambush Nigerian troops on official UN peace support operations out of bravado or gallantry and kill our soldiers will no longer be accepted by me,” he added.
The Nigerian leader called on the United Nations to change the rules of engagement in order for his country to continue contributing to peacekeeping missions but did not elaborate. He however reiterated Nigeria’s commitment to international peacekeeping .
The former Nigerian president Olusegun Obasanjo also echoed calls by Jonathan saying that the government “should not send out our troops to be sitting ducks of senseless militias, and made sacrificial lambs in peace support operations. I believe that the rules of engagement need to be re-examined because when rules of engagement are not clear, soldiers get confused and are easy prey to ethnic militias.”
He said Nigeria cannot run away from international peacekeeping because insecurity in one part of the world, affects other parts of the world and that with a population of 5 million Nigerians living in Sudan for instance, there is no way Nigeria can turn its back to the crises in that country.
Nigeria, currently a member of the UN Security Council (UNSC) and Africa’s most populous nation, lost seven soldiers in 2007 in an ambush during peace operations in Sudan.
Also last year, a Nigerian soldier was gunned down near his home in the capital of Sudan’s South Darfur state by unknown attackers who stole his car.
The Nigerian Chief of Defence Staff Paul Dike said that that there are currently over 5, 700 Nigerian troops partaking in peacekeeping operations worldwide making her the fourth largest troop contributing country in the world.
He said Nigeria has so far lost 2, 000 men and expended over $10 billion in peacekeeping, saying out of 55 UN operations, Nigeria has participated in 40 operations in such countries as Congo, Lebanon, Somalia, Croatia, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Sudan, Ivory Coast and Democratic Republic of Congo.
Nigerian figures currently hold senior positions within the UN missions in the South and Darfur.
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DASODIKO
Nigeria threatens to withdraw peacekeepers from U.N. missions
Presidnet Goodwill; Please try to monitor the soldiers of your country that serve in UNAMID by yourself. There is corruption in them from the above. Genocie regime in Khartoum has many of Nigerian origins who work in NISS and they still speak Folani and other Nigerian languages, they can simply fool your peacekeepers to be agents for the genocide regime on return of oil money. If take money and refused to do the job then will simply be killed.
The IDPs in Darfur according to my information do not trust them becuase some of Sudan Folanis working for NISS sneak in the camps with names of belonging to Nigerian UNAMID forces to collect informations from the IDPs.