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ECOWAS wants heavy sanctions on
violators of small arms treaty
From ISMAIL OMIPIDAN , Kaduna
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
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Photo: Sun News Publishing |
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The Economic Community of West African States has called for imposition
of heavy sanctions on any member-sate that violates the United Nations
treaty on the stockpile of small arms and ammunition.
Speaking in Kaduna on Monday, at a five-day workshop on the “Stockpile
of Arms and Ammunition Management and Security” held at the
Air Force Institute of Technology, Kaduna, Head, ECOWAS Small Arms
Unit, Dr. Agrekethom Cyriaque said if state-owned weapons were not
properly kept and managed, they could fall into wrong hands.
To this end, he said adequate measures must be taken by the state
agents responsible for the stockpile of arms to safeguard and properly
manage them. Also speaking, the German Charge d'Affairs in Nigeria,
Mr. Mathias Veltim disclosed that his country was investing the
sum of US$290,000 in the programme.
Veltim said that the programme was consequent upon the United Nations
Resolution 64/65 co-sponsored by Germany and other countries regarding
the matter, and as such he assured that his country and the European
Union would continue to support the programme on arms stockpile
in order to secure small arms and protect them from going into wrong
hands, even as he described the seminar as another valuable collaboration
between Germany and ECOWAS.
Chairman of the National Commission on the Control of Small Arms
and Light Weapons, retired Air Commodore Danjuma John Otaru said
Nigeria had had negative experience regarding small arms proliferation,
especially in the Niger Delta.
Otaru said that about 200 immigration and border officials had been
trained on the programme with a view to checking the illegal trade
in arms and charged participants at the seminar to put into practice
the knowledge they would acquire at the end of the training programme.
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