British High Commissioner to Nigeria, Catriona Laing, has explained that the recently issued travel advisory on the security situation in Nigeria is in line with the UK government’s security support to Nigeria and Africa.
Laing disclosed this to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Sunday in Abuja.
According to her, although the initial threat that led to the issuing of the advise, warning British Citizens on the security threat in Abuja, have been managed and the advice reverted, there is still a loud warning.
“In terms of our travel advice, we use a red, amber, green system, so States in Nigeria are categorised in that way.
“The FCT and Abuja has been green all the time I have been here until we were made aware of the specific security in the Abuja FCT area and we have now reverted though back to green.
“Which is not to say that, do not worry, there is no problem; it is still look carefully in our travel advice and that is there is something like there’s a high probability of potential terrorists in Abuja.
“So we are still warning people that there could be a terrorist attack in Abuja but the particular threat we were worried about we are confident has been managed.
“It is obviously for the Nigerian government to lead on this; the various agencies are working incredibly hard to pick up intelligence to process it and to follow the leads.
“Our job, as the UK and the US, is to support Nigeria and we have a security defence partnership with Nigeria which has many, many different aspects.
“One of the aspects is support on counterterrorism. So we do military training, for example on counter IED to show your soldiers how they can spot IED and dismantle it if they see one.
“So that is one of many kinds of programmes that we that we run here; so we are here to support, but it is obviously for the Nigerian government and the military to lead on security.”
On if the U.K government liaised with Nigerian security agencies before issuing the travel advise, Laing said that the first thing the UK did was to inform the Nigerian government before making it public.
“But we have a responsibility to our citizens to alert them if we are concerned about a security threat. But of course, that advice is available to everybody, anyone can sign up for a travel alert from us.
“And the DSS did put out a statement pretty soon after that saying, yes, we are aware this is and please alert us saying to citizens from Nigeria if you see anything; so that’s the authoritative advice from the Government of Nigeria.
“But our responsibility is obviously to our own citizens who are planning to travel to Nigeria and all countries in the world, including Nigeria.
“So you have travel advice, everyone has travel advice and so we talked carefully to the government of Nigeria but we also have to alert our citizens and indeed anyone who wants to read.”
The British Envoy, however, lamented the security situation of the country which she said had deteriorated over the years, spreading from just the Northeast as it was in the past to other parts of the country.
“I have been here for four years and I have seen sadly quite a bit of deterioration in the security situation across the whole country.
“When I arrived, the terrorist problem was seen to be very much focused in the Northeast; there were other challenges like in the Niger Delta and so on.
“But since then, we have seen the Northwest actually overtaking the Northeast in terms of security threats.
“We have seen these challenges in the middle belt as farmers and herders having all sorts of conflicts over land and water and so on.
“Then you have got some challenges in Southeast, the Biafra movement. You have got the ongoing problems in the Niger Delta, kidnapping all over the country; so things have definitely got worse.
“One reason I think, maybe one of the explanations could be the shock of COVID-19; it thrust millions of Nigerians into poverty almost overnight because, obviously as an oil exporting country, your budget crashed overnight.
“And that has made it very simple. So yeah, a young man, maybe just about making a living is now potentially turning to a life of crime; So that’s the kind of context,” Laing said.
