BY ANAYO OKOLI
UMUAHIA-FORMER Ghanaian President, Jerry Rawlings has indentified insecurity as the bane of the African continent even as he tasked African leaders to tackle the problem from the roots.

Rawlings spoke recently when Governor Theodore Orji of Abia state led an entourage to visit his him in Ghana.

According to him, African leaders must now invest heavily on political security, rather than on soldiers, police and the likes which have created enmity, pressure and stress on the populace due to misuse of their power.

“We should be investing a lot more time and energy in the political security. That’s how we (Ghana) survived for 18 years because we invested a lot more time in searching for solutions than reaching into the sources of the problem. We survived that long because in the empowerment of our people, we dealt a lot more in education and doing away with social injustices, gender, ethnic issues where one tribe tries to over-ride others.

“In effect it created a better climate to sow the seed for the foundation we needed to build upon. That’s how come we just made it”, he said adding though that these principles have not been sustained owing to some governments resort to physical security by terrorizing the people into a state of subjugation, thereby taking away the creative energy of the people”, the former president said.

According Rawlings to, the crisis in Mali should be another test case of how African leaders can resolve their own problems amicably without escalating it.

“That even as they prepare for military action, they would spend and invest a little more time into looking at the root causes and see how a solution can be found to it before one contemplates the use of physical power”, he advised.

Rawlings urged other governors in Nigeria to emulate the selfless leadership of the Abia State Governor, saying that “we need a few more selfless leaders in our continent”.