The Director General of the World Trade Organisation, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, has tasked Nigerian politicians to stop weaponising insecurity against their opposition in office.
The former minister of Finance, argued that it is impossible to have socioeconomic development without security.
Okonjo-Iweala led this out at the Eko Hotel & Suites in Lagos during the opening ceremony of the 2024 Annual General Conference of the Nigerian Bar Association, on Sunday.
She said: “We cannot have socio-economic development without security. We certainly cannot have security without development.
“We all know that security has been weaponised in our country for political purposes by political actors, leading partly to the situation we have now.
“We have politicians who believe that the best way to make their opponents look bad is to instigate insecurity making it look like they can’t govern, regardless of whether this leads to loss of lives and property of innocent Nigerians. This has to stop.”
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Also addresing oil theft in the Niger Delta region, the WTO boss said that those responsible for stopping the “intolerable” action of crude oil stealing no longer have excuses.
She said: “A second aspect of security relates to the security of national assets. Nigerians have seen for years how organised crude oil theft on a massive scale seriously undermines the economic and financial health of the country.
“All Nigerians must agree that stealing of our national assets of any type is intolerable and must be stopped.”
