The ruling party candidate in Benin’s upcoming presidential election has vowed \u200cto create municipal police forces in northern border towns to defend against persistent attacks from terrorist groups.<\/p>\n
Romuald Wadagni, who has been finance minister under President Patrice Talon since 2016, also \u200bsaid Benin had “no choice” but to work with neighbouring countries to address \u200bsecurity challenges, as insurgents active in the Sahel rapidly\u00a0increase their attacks\u00a0\u2060on the borderlands between Niger, Benin and Nigeria.<\/p>\n
Wadagni described the plan for \u200bpolice forces in border towns while unveiling his political platform ahead of the April \u200b12 election, in which he is the strong favourite.<\/p>\n
Benin’s national Republican Police force already has a presence in the north along with soldiers.<\/p>\n
Wadagni did not specify a target number for \u200bmunicipal police officers in the area, nor did he say how much the \u200bprogramme would cost.<\/p>\n
“The goal will be to ensure that young people, in their own environment, \u200care \u2060trained, equipped, and given the opportunity to defend their homes, their families, their siblings, and their surroundings,” he said.<\/p>\n
ATTACKS EXPAND IN NORTH<\/strong><\/p>\n Security issues in the north will be one of Wadagni’s top challenges if he takes over for Talon, who \u200bhas pursued sweeping \u200beconomic reforms while \u2060trying to boost Benin’s appeal to\u00a0tourists.<\/p>\n Benin rarely comments on terrorist violence in the north, though it said last April that \u200ban attack by al Qaeda-linked Jama’at Nusrat al\u2011Islam wal\u2011Muslimin had \u200bkilled 54 \u2060soldiers. An attack earlier this month killed 15 soldiers\u00a0and wounded five more at a military camp in the north.<\/p>\n Disgruntled soldiers attempted to oust Talon in a military \u2060coup in \u200bDecember, citing the deteriorating security situation in northern \u200bBenin “coupled with the disregard and neglect of our fallen brothers-in-arms”.<\/p>\n That plot\u00a0was foiled with help from neighbouring \u200bcountries, including Nigeria.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The ruling party candidate in Benin’s upcoming presidential election has vowed \u200cto create municipal police forces in northern border towns to defend against persistent attacks from terrorist groups. Romuald Wadagni, who has been finance minister under President Patrice Talon since 2016, also \u200bsaid Benin had “no choice” but to work with neighbouring countries to address […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20220,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":9,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"format":"standard","override":[{"template":"1","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_comment_section":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"1"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0","source_name":"Reuters","subtitle":""},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[2362,33,1129,27],"tags":[1501,512,2973,175,4958],"class_list":["post-20219","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-politics","category-security","category-west-africa","tag-al-qaeda","tag-benin","tag-jamaat-nusrat-al-islam-wal-muslimin","tag-nigeria","tag-talon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20219","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20219"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20219\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20222,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20219\/revisions\/20222"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20220"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}