Nigeria’s Minister of Defence, Major General Bashir Salihi Magashi (rtd) and the Indian High Commissioner to Nigeria, Mr Abhay Thankur, met on Friday at the Ship House headquarters of the Ministry of Defence on ways of fostering the Nigerian-Indian Bilateral Defence Co-operation.
Magashi and Thankur discussed on new ways “of mutually beneficial arrangements and agreement at the Ministerial levels.”
Spokesperson to the Minister of Defence, Mr Mohammed Abdulkadri, said in a statement, “the issue of bilateral interest which necessitated the interface between the representatives of the two Countries were discussed behind closed doors.”
The statement further said that “the highly classified and restricted matters that are strategic to common interest of the two countries were witnessed by senior Nigerian military officers and some principal personnel of the Ministry as well as the Indian Defence Adviser, Colonel Cachin Dubey.”
The Defence cooperation between Nigeria and India began in earnest after Nigeria’s independence in 1960, resulting in India helping to set up various military institutions in the country.
This include elite military training establishments in Nigeria especially the Nigerian Defence Academy (NDA) at Kaduna and the Naval College at Port Harcourt.
In addition, several Nigerian officers were trained over the years in Indian military institutions. These include former Nigerian Presidents Olusegun Obasanjo, Ibrahim Babangida and Muhammudu Buhari who attended the prestigious Defence Services Staff Course (DSSC) at Wellington in 1970s.
In October 2007, Nigeria and India signed a bilateral Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on Defence Cooperation especially in counter terrorism and counter-intelligence (CT/CI), sea piracy and exchange of visits between training institutes.
The first meeting of the Joint Defence Coordination Committee (JDCC), which explores avenues to enhance the bilateral Defence Cooperation held in New Delhi in April 2013. The fifth JDCC held in New Delhi from 17-18 January 2019.
