COAS meets foreign Defence Advisers, seeks collaboration

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COAS meets foreign Defence Advisers, seeks collaboration

The Chief of Army Staff, Lt. Gen. Taoreed Lagbaja, on Thursday, met with Defence Advisers/attachees of 27 countries.

Present at the meeting which was held at the Army Headquarters in Abuja are the Defence Advisers from India; United Kingdom; France; Germany; Italy; Russia; China; Iran; Saudi Arabia; Korea; South Africa; Eygpt; Ghana; Burkina Faso; Mali and Senegal among others.

Speaking, Lagbaja said the Army would work to discourage criminal elements from moving into Nigeria from other countries.

He sought the collaboration of other countries to achieve this.

Lagbaja said, “Considering the nature of the ground and the Mandara mountain that extends to Cross River State in Nigeria, so, we’ll continue to work on our mechanism in that general area to ensure that these criminal elements and dissidents do not cross over freely from Nigeria to Cameroon and vice versa.

“I appreciate the pledge of the defence attache of Sierra Leone and we look forward to a fruitful engagement with all other countries to deny the criminal elements and dissidents from incubating their nefarious activities abroad and bringing them home to perpetrate. ”

The Defence Attaché of India, Col. Legha Romi, who spoke on behalf of the DAs, said, urged his colleagues to be frank and constructive in their contributions.

He said the attachés had been interacting with the DIA as well as the Army headquarters and the other service headquarters over the years, saying that the combined engagement was something different.

He said the diversity was an opportunity for them to learn amongst themselves as well for mutual benefit among the countries.

The Chief of Defence Intelligence, Maj.-Gen. Undiandeye, said the engagement was the first of this kind to ensure that the advisers could discuss and interact in commonality to present the concerns, challenges, and interactive issues.

Undiandeye said the DIA was the convent and the interchange point upon which the exchanges and interaction with all the attachés, adding that every once in a while there were requests, demands, and efforts by individual advisers to directly interact with the services.