Former Sudan Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok yesterday warned that the deteriorating security situation in Sudan will have long-lasting devastating effects in the region, if left unchecked.
Khartoum’s elusive search for peace after dictator Omar al-Bashir was ousted by military in 2019, has recently degenerated into war between Sudan’s army chief, Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitary leader, Lt. Gen Mohamed Hamdan.
Mr Hamdok called for an end to the generals’ battle for leadership, terming the war senseless.
“It is a senseless war. It is a war that nobody can secure absolute win,” Mr Hamdok said, explaining that victory over smog of death and corpses was not victory in its very essence.
“It will be a nightmare for the world. This war has to stop. It has so many ramifications,” the former premier said.
He, however, acknowledged the fragility of the matter, asking all the stakeholders to act fast.
Mr Hamdok was speaking in Nairobi during the Ibrahim Governance Weekend where he noted that lack of a proper governance structure had resulted in chaos in the war-torn country.
“We need to agree on how to govern Sudan and not who governs it,” he said.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates that 459 people have died and more than 4,000 injured since the battle begun mid this month.
Mr Hamdok asked envoys to approach the quest for peace with a unified voice and stance.Lack of it, he warned, was hurting his mother country and its citizens were bearing the brunt of it all.
Fragmented approach to peace in Khartoum and the insincerity in political and military arena, he observed, had complicated the already fragile transition .
Meanwhile, the former premier suggested that humanitarian corridors be opened to alleviate the suffering of those affected.
Mr Hamdok is a Sudanese public administrator who served as the 15th Prime Minister of Sudan from 2019 to 2021, and from 2021 to 2022. He resigned amid political deadlock in January 2, 2022. He spent much of his career working in international institutions before joining a three-year transitional government formed in 2019 after a revolution that overthrew al-Bashir.
Reliving the events that led to his ascension to power he said “it was our unity that toppled the dictatorship.”
“The change happened but we suffered incoherent political leadership. We needed a unified political front, and this is not unique to Sudan ,” he said of his stint as the prime minister.
In the days before the coup that bundled him out of power, he reminisced, it was already an open secret and only a matter of time before the execution.
He was ousted in a military coup but later reinstated .
“When I reached an agreement with the military, I did so to stop bloodshed, to put a brake on the coup itself, to protect the achievements of my two years and to pave way for transition,” he said.
The Ibrahim Governance Weekend, organised by the Mo Ibrahim Foundation in Nairobi, brought together prominent African political and business leaders, civil society, multilateral and regional institutions, and major international partners, to debate the challenges and opportunities for the continent.
Source: Nation
