Mr Adib Saani, Foreign Policy and Security Analyst, has described the Ivorian beach resort attacks by Islamic militants as a rude awakening to Ghana.
The attacks by six al-Qaeda in the Maghreb gunmen on the L'Etoile du Sud in the Ivorian coastal town of Grand Bassam left about 20 dead.
Mr Saani indicated in an interview with Ghana News Agency in Accra that terrorists attacks on African soil is not a new trend.
He cited a number of attacks on the continent including the simultaneous bombing of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in August, 1998, al- Qaeda attack on Israeli owned hotel in Mombasa in 2002 and most recently Garissa University attack by al Shabab that left about 150 students dead.
Mr Saani said: “But it becomes more worrying and distressing when these attacks gets closer to you by the day,” he said.
He noted that terrorism gained prominence in West Africa with the advent of Boko Haram, which staged 305 attacks in 2012 and 137 in 2013.
In 2014, the number of deaths caused by the group is reported to be more than 6,644. The militants slaughtered 6,073 that same year, hence making Boko Haram the most deadly terrorist group in the world, according to the Global Terrorism Index from the Institute for Economics and Peace.
Mr Saani added that, the recent attacks in Mali, Burkina Faso and Cote d’ Ivoire should be a major source of worry to Ghanaians because most of the factors that creates the conducive or fertile environment for terror attacks are present in Ghana.
“The menace of terrorism emerged from complex and deep rooted political, economic, social and developmental deficits.
“While religion, especially political Islam, is often cited as a primary cause of terrorism, it is not so since religious groups in West Africa have co-existed peacefully for centuries.
“Economic distress, ethnic and religious fissures, fragile governance, weak democracy, and rampant human rights abuses create an environment in which terrorists thrive,” Mr Saani observed.
He said the Bush administration acknowledged this link in its 2002 National Security Strategy, which argued that “poverty, weak institutions, and corruption can make weak states vulnerable to terrorist networks and drug cartels within their borders."
Mr Saani said counter-terrorism programmes for the region are consistently underfinanced and responsibilities are divided along old-fashioned bureaucratic lines.
He noted that, Article 3 of the ECOWAS Protocol for Conflict Prevention, Management, Resolution, Peacekeeping and Security (1999) stipulates that combating international terrorism is an objective of the regional body.
He said Ghana should enhance cooperation with regional and international partners to achieve outcomes through the effective implementation of the ECOWAS Strategy.
“Ghana must show solid commitment towards operationalising national counter-terrorism measures by providing the needed financial, human and technical resources in specially areas of intelligence gathering.
“The capacity of law enforcement and criminal justice officials in the region should be boosted through special training to enforce counter-terrorism measures in accordance with national and international human rights conventions.
“Fighting terrorism should also include fighting poverty as many of the youth are lured into such acts with money,” he said.
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