By Dipo Olowookere
Federal Government has made a passionate call to India, seeking deeper relationship with country in the area of capacity building as well as tackling terrorism.
Minister of Interior, Mr Abdulrahman Bello Dambazau, confessed that Nigeria desires to have personnel of the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC), Nigeria Prison Service (NPS), Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS), and Federal Fire Service (FFS) trained in India’s National Defence College (NDC) in New Delhi, saying the institution ranks as the best in terms of Strategic Studies.
Mr Dambazau, who disclosed this when he received a Study Tour Team from the college, stated that other areas, in which Nigeria desired deeper relationship with India, included granting of permanent residency and acquisition of citizenship.
On maintaining internal security, the Minister disclosed that the various reform efforts in the services under the ministry have led to improved service delivery, adding that the creation of a Multi-Agency Situation Room for harnessing the various capacity and expertise of the individual agencies for greater maintenance of internal security was a case in point.
The Minister stressed that the Ministry has been involved in post-conflict peace-building in the North-East by providing security to liberated communities, enforcing border security, ensuring public safety, taking custody of suspected insurgents, protection of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) camps, provision of security for logistics and protection of critical infrastructure.
Mr Dambazau informed the tour team that Nigeria faced such domestic security threats as insurgency and terrorism in the North-East, Economic and Financial crimes, trans-border crimes, oil pipeline sabotage on account of militancy in the Niger Delta, other violent crimes, and ecological challenges.
The international security threats which Nigeria faces, according to the Minister, include human trafficking, mass migration, proliferation of small arms and light weapons, terrorism, cyber-crime and explosion of refugees on account of armed conflicts in the region.
He disclosed that the border security problem has been compounded by the fact that Nigeria is bounded by communities with which it shares cultural and other affinities, as well as by the ECOWAS Protocol on Free Movement of Persons and Goods, to which Nigeria is a signatory.
Speaking earlier, the leader of the team, Maj. Gen. Madhavan Vinaya Chandran Nair, said the team was on a study tour to Nigeria to oobserve its internal security management, adding that the National Defence College of India, located in New Delhi, ranked as a major institute for strategic studies.
The 15-man team was accompanied by the Indian High Commissioner to Nigeria, Mr B. N. Reddy.
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Adedapo Adesanya