ECOWAS Must Protect The Waters Off West Africa's Coastline From All Foreign Missile Tests By Banning Them

It has just emerged that in December 2015, a Royal Navy Trident class submarine, HMS Vengeance, conducted a missile test off the coast of the U.S. state of Florida, in which it fired an unarmed Trident11 D5 missile intended to hit a sea target off the coast of west Africa.

The missile apparently misfired and veered towards the U.S. instead. The sea target it was aimed at off the west African coast was 9,012 kilometres (5,600 miles) away from HMS Vengeance's position off the Florida coast. Incredible.

Why should HMS Vengeance's Trident missiles target the waters off west Africa, one wonders?

And how do we know that the warheads the so-called 'unarmed' missiles carry  might not in reality be depleted uranium bombs -  the radioactive type of bombs used in the Iraq wars that damaged the health of so many coalition soldiers after the Gulf wars and have poisoned many parts of Iraq that still  remain radioactive even as we speak?

We are a peace-loving people in west Africa. But we must not allow our lives to be toyed with by nations whose military-industrial complexes have a reputation for seeking wars abroad in order to profit handsomely from them.

The leaders of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) must protest to Britain in the strongest possible terms about the June 2015 missile test by HMS Vengeance - and demand an end to all such missile tests: just as Britain herself  regularly protests against North Korean missile tests and for good reason too.

No nation on the surface of this earth must be allowed by the leaders of the ECOWAS  member-states to test-fire  missiles - especially long-range missiles that can carry nuclear warheads - aimed at sea targets  in waters off the entire  west African continental shelf. Period.

The question that ECOWAS security chiefs need to answer is: Were they aware of the test-firing of  HMS Vengeance's Trident11 D5 missile targetting an object in the Atlantic Ocean off the west African coastline in December 2015 - and if not what steps will they take going forward into the future to make sure that the ECOWAS heads of state agree to ban all such missile tests by foreign military forces based outside the African continent? Enough is enough. Haaba.