President Goodluck Jonathan of Nigeria
DAILY TRUST
13 FEBRUARY 2012
The Federal Government has established two new defence intelligence missions in neighbouring Niger Republic and the Republic of Mali in order to check the activities of the dreaded Boko Haram sect, according to documents seen by Daily Trust.
Already, a budgetary proposal for the purchase of the missions’ offices, residential apartments and deployment of personnel has been forwarded to the National Assembly for approval by the
Chief of Defence Intelligence Major General S. Y. Audu.
According to the documents available to Daily Trust, the Defence Attaché Offices (DAO) will be sited at Bamako and Niamey, the capitals of Mali and Niger respectively. They are expected to “work closely in order to respond to global defence and security challenges and help curtail the nation’s security challenges.”
“The DOA was directed to establish the missions to check the activities of Al-Qaeda in the Magreb and the fall of the Muammar Gaddafi’s regime in Libya”, among others.
At the moment, Nigeria has 20 defence missions abroad and has accreditation in 98 countries. In December last year, the chairman House of Representatives Committee on Defence Rep. Bashir Adamu Kazaure (PDP, Jigawa) advocated for a holistic review of Nigeria’s defence missions abroad in order to address the current security challenges in the country.
He said “most of the challenges we have now are within the West coast and the African continent. There are so many defence missions in Europe and America and the Far East which are really not very important to what is happening here but our neighbor Niger Republic here is neglected. So we have to put a stop to that and see how we use intelligence missions to improve our internal
security.”
