Stakeholders To Tinubu: Sending troops to Niger akin to leaving leprosy to treat ringworms

<p>• Senate, PDP Govs ask Tinubu, ECOWAS to explore political, diplomatic options • ‘Stop giving legitimacy to electoral fraud, imposition against will of people’ • At heart of Every Coup is yearning for better governance, improved welfare of citizens –Rasfsanjani • ECOWAS can’t sustain, succeed with military intervention, says Onuoha</p>, <p>As the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), currently under the leadership of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, considers stringent sanctions, including military intervention, against the junta in Niger Republic, there have been widespread calls on the regional body to tread with caution.</p>, <p>From political, religious to business leaders across different strata of the society, they spoke in unison, as they urged President Tinubu to explore more diplomatic options to ECOWAS’ attempt to restore the ousted democratically-elected government of Mohamed Bazoum.</p>, <p>Specifically, the Senate asked President Bola Ahmed Tinubu and other ECOWAS Heads of State to explore political and diplomatic options in resolving the crisis in Niger Republic.</p>, <p>It called on President Tinubu to further encourage other ECOWAS leaders to find ways of strengthening the political and diplomatic ties existing among ECOWAS states while trying to resolve the Niger crisis.</p>, <p>This was disclosed by the President of the Senate, Godswill Akpabio, after a closed door meeting, which lasted for four hours yesterday over the letter sent to the Senate on Friday regarding the resolutions of ECOWAS leaders on the Niger crisis.</p>, <p>Reading out Senate’s resolutions on the matter, Akpabio made it clear that President Tinubu never sought approval of the Senate to deploy the armed forces to Niger Republic.</p>, <p>Similarly, Governors elected on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) rose from a meeting with the party’s national leadership and its presidential candidate, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar in Abuja yesterday, and advised President Tinubu to avoid any form of war with the Repub