Armed Forces To Sustain Partnership With California National Guard

The Chief of Defence Staff (CDS), General Lucky Irabor has expressed the readiness of the Armed Forces of Nigeria (AFN) to sustain the existing strategic partnership with the California National Guards (CNG) aimed at boosting defence capabilities of both countries.

The CDS gave the assurance on Tuesday during the visit of the Adjutant General of California National Guard, Major General David Baldwin to the Defence Headquarters (DHQ), Abuja.

Gen Irabor acknowledged that a lot of value has been added to the AFN partnership with CNG and assured the delegation that the partnership would be sustained.

He equally expressed his appreciation to the United States Government and her military for showing interest in the issues relating to Nigeria, noting that overall national disposition is partly towards the AFN strategic engagements.

He pointed out that sustainable peace in Nigeria, Africa and the world at large would be addressed with these interventions.

The Defence Chief expressed delight that the CNG has made significant impacts in relations to the terms of partnership agreement.

This, he noted are the areas that are still outstanding that will be addressed soonest.

The Adjutant General of California National Guard, Major General David S Baldwin, earlier in his remarks , said he was ready to expand the partnership which began in 2008.

The Adjutant General further noted that the CNG intends to expand what he described as joint arena in air and ground integration for the benefits of both Services.

According to him, the CNG and the AFN would share their common experience on human capacity development.

Areas of cooperation discussed during the visit, included; training on air and ground integration, communication, training on military intelligence, military justice system and enhancement of Judge Advocacy training for legal officers.

Other areas of cooperation are: military decision making process, with emphasis on train the trainer to enhance the capacity of subordinates on tactical and operational responsibilities.

The empowerment of Non Commissioned officers towards making them understand their roles and Gender Mainstreaming training towards improving the roles and opportunities of female personnel in the military profession was also discussed.

The emerging critical areas discussed were: training of personnel on cyber warfare, including cyber defence, cyber hygiene and protection of own network.

Partnership on space project, defence transformation and innovation and information warfare were also considered during the visit.