Molly Kilete, Abuja
The second round of the Nigeria-Pakistan staff talk aimed at curbing terrorism and insurgency has opened in Abuja. Top military officers are attending the two-day talk, which is holding at the Defence headquarters conference room, from the Nigerian Army, Navy, Air Force and their counterparts from the Pakistani armed forces.
In his address at the occasion, the Director-General of the Defence Industries Cooperation (DICON), Major-General Bamidele Ogunkale, said the two-day talk is aimed at better positioning the Nigeria armed forces as a formidable force in the African region.
Ogunkale, while noting that Nigeria and Pakistan signed a bilateral agreement on military cooperation in 2010, said the agreements was basically in the areas of training and education, sending observers for military maneouvers and exercises.
He listed other areas of the agreement to include cooperation in defence technologies, including platforms, weapon system, ammunition and military vehicles and cooperation between the two military forces among others. He said the first round of the Nigeria-Pakistani talk which took place at Chaklala, Islamabad, deliberated more on training cooperation, counter terrorism cooperation, invitation for participation in professional military competition, cooperation in counter IED and peacekeeping.
He said: “The following offers were made to the armed forces of Nigeria: They include life extension programmes and general overhaul of F-7NI aircraft, repair/overhaul of 14xC-130 aircraft propeller assemblies, maintenance of air defence radars and installation of special flight instrument display unit on NAF aircrafts among others.
He also said that “cooperation in military production were exploited in the areas of technical cooperation with Pakistani ordinance factory and other Pakistani defence related industries, development of telecom products in Nigeria, collaboration and transfer of technology and building capacity through the establishment of production lines for the production of communication equipment in Nigeria.”
Ogunkale announced that 60 personnel from the Nigerian Army have been specially trained on anti-terrorism in Pakistan. He also said the Nigerian Army has subscribed to selected army courses for the 2017/2018 training season from Pakistani government on gratis basis, and subscription to selected army courses for 2018/2019 training season on payment basis.
The leader of the Pakistani military delegation, Major Mohammad Shafiq, while expressing the hope that the second round of talks would take the bilateral relations to a new apex with visionary futuristic collaboration, said: “Pakistan and its armed forces realty value our relations with Nigeria and its people.”