Adieu, Professor Awoonor

Last Saturday’s terrorist attack at the Westgate Mall in the Kenyan city of Nairobi is perhaps one of the most barbaric terrorist attacks in Africa in recent years.
It will be remembered in Ghana because it was in that attack that Professor Kofi Nyidevu Awoonor, a prominent academician, poet and author and former Chairman of the Council of State, died.

The militant Somali group, Al-Shabab, has claimed responsibility for the attack.

During the attack, Prof Awoonor’s son, Afetsi, who was with his father at the time of the attack, was injured but he is reported to be responding to treatment. The Daily Graphic wishes him speedy recovery.

Our hearts go to the Awoonors and the families of all the 68 dead and 175 injured in that deadly terrorist attack. We condemn, in no uncertain terms, all such attacks and urge all progressive African leaders to unite against any form of terrorism on the continent.

The Westgate Mall attack follows in the mad tradition of Al-Shabab (full name means Mujahedeen Youth Movement in Arabic), which is bent on attacking any country that is seen as not supporting its attempts at forcing an all Islamic state in Somalia, its home country.

It is known that Al-Shabab has been fighting the government in Somalia, since 2006, to establish an Islamic state and impose Sharia Law in the Horn of Africa.

Kenya has been an Al-Shabab target ever since the Kenyan army entered Somalia in October 2011 to help African Union peacekeeping troops and Ethiopian soldiers who were fighting the militant group.

The group claimed responsibility for the twin bomb attacks in neighbouring Uganda in July 2010 in which 76 people who were watching the soccer World Cup final at two separate venues were killed.

Al-Shabab said it targeted Uganda because that country had troops serving in Somalia’s African Union peacekeeping force.

The attack last Saturday marked the third time within two days that Islamist militants had struck an African capital. On September 20, members of the Boko Haram Islamist group in Nigeria clashed with state security forces who were investigating a suspected militant weapons cache at a building site in Abuja.

Reports say nine people were killed in the fighting, the Nation newspaper reported.

Again, at least five people died in grenade and gun attacks blamed on al-Shabab in the main Bakara Market in Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu, earlier on Saturday.

The activities of Al-Shabab in eastern Africa should bring home to all African leaders the seriousness of terrorism on the continent. The Daily Graphic is of the opinion that for us in West Africa, Boko Haram poses a closer threat and, therefore, the fight against that group should not be left to President Goodluck Jonathan alone.

The heart-rendering  attack in which our professor, a man of multiple talent, lost his life will go down in the history of Ghana as one of the days that an event in a faraway country directly hit Ghana and it is a wake-up call for a concerted effort to end terrorism in all forms.

Prof Awoonor died not because he was a critic of Al-Shabab; he was a victim of circumstances. He will be sorely remembered in academia, politics and diplomatic circles.

Rest in peace, Prof.

Daily Graphic/Ghana