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The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) has said it remained committed to assisting member-nations in checking theft, diversion and leakage of small arms in the sub-region.
It also recommitted to helping the affected in strengthening their physical security and safeguarding their armouries to contain the menace.
The commission’s representative, Ahoba Joseph, during the inauguration of a multi-national small arms and ammunition group course at the Martin Luther Agwai International Leadership and Peace Keeping Centre, Jaji Cantonment in Kaduna, pledged that the sub-regional body will continue to demonstrate strong commitment towards addressing threats to peace, security and stability of the area.
The course, premised on physical security and stockpile management competence is a collaboration between ECOWAS and the German government and it lasts for four days.
Joseph enthused that in the next five years, the intervention would deliver to the region a pool of instructors and senior instructors.
“In this regard, our legal frameworks are being promoted, thereby providing member-states with responses in dealing with current as well as emerging security challenges,” he stated.
The commandant of the peace keeping centre, Maj-Gen. Abubakar Tarfa, promised necessary assistance, adding that the exercise could not have come at a better time in the face of the prevailing arms proliferation in West Africa.
He urged the participants to apply professionalism to the training, which according to him, was critical towards achieving the overall objective of the programme.
Also speaking, lead facilitator, small arms and ammunitions group, Lt-Col. Jens Kermes noted that the project was to strengthen international cooperation and facilitate useful exchange of information as well as promote regional ownership.
Besides, the ECOWAS Task Force on its single currency project is meeting next month to assess the policy.
President of the commission, Jean-Claude Brou, disclosed this while presenting the Community Work Programme at the ongoing Ordinary Session of the ECOWAS Parliament in Abuja.
He said stakeholders in the region’s economic and finance sectors, including the central banks and ministers of finance, had been deliberating on the fiscal system.
His words: “The single currency is a topic that is very important because it completes the free movement of persons for a single market. And if there is a single currency, one can carry out trade and there is need for harmonisation.
“Deliberations are being carried out with the central banks and the ministers of finance in the region and some key issues are being discussed.
“Issues such as the convergence criteria as well as the best exchange regime to adopt with challenges and costs involved so as to give the best conditions for the community.
“The studies that are being carried out would be completed by next month so that we can have the proposals and make progress.”