Ethiopia, Nigeria sign security agreement

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Ethiopian Chief of Staff to join hands with Nigerian, Kenyan counterparts

Prime Minister HailemariamDesalegn, who this week officially visited Nigeria for two days, agreed with his counterpart, president of Nigeria, Goodluck Jonathan to boost their partnership in the areas of trade, investment and security.

The signed cooperation agreement includes working on agriculture and diplomatic services training. The visit was accompanied by Tedros Adhanom (Ph.D.) minister of Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MoFA) and other senior officials.

Speaking at a joint press conference with President Goodluck Jonathan in State House, Abuja, to round off his two-day visit to the country, Hailemariam said the resort to suicide bombing by terrorists was an indication that the war on terror was succeeding.
“You know terrorism is not African agenda only. There has been terror attack in Boston, United States and many parts of the globe. So, it is not something that is new to Nigeria, Ethiopia and other African countries. It is a global phenomenon and you see that there was terror attack in Iraq recently and is expanding.

“We have to see it as a global phenomenon that has to be tackled together in unison. It should not be left to this or that region or this or that country. We have to bear in mind the genesis of this terrorism,” he said.

Hailemariam said Nigeria and Ethiopia had reached an agreement on the fight against terror with the countries’ chiefs of staff working on the modalities adding that “we are working as one with Kenya to fight this terrorism and the chiefs of staff are in Nairobi, discussing how to fight this issue as we speak.”

In his remarks, President Jonathan observed that Ethiopia had a longer history of terrorism than Nigeria, adding that the country had a lot to learn from the East African country’s experience.

Dina Mufti, spokesperson of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MoFA) told The Reporter that the two leaders agreed to work on the areas of security mainly in eliminating and fighting the threats of terrorism. Since Ethiopia was the victim of terrorism and has been fighting terrorism for the past ten or so years and is able to defend the attacks by the terrorists, therefore the agreement aims at sharing our experience in defending terrorism with our African brothers.

He noted that the agreement basically includes the exchange of information which means that since terrorism is a global phenomena it is important to share information so as to be able to tackle the danger, cooperate with other partners in terms of fighting terrorism. For instance, at the level of the African Union (AU) to instigate to have anti terrorism laws, cooperation of states in the fight to end terrorism in terms of mobilization of finance, training and so on, the other fundamentals of the agreement are presenting the case to the international organizations including the United Nations (UN) in the search of diplomatic support,where the two countries are a member.

The mechanism to implement the modalities will be discussed for the future and currently an agreement is about only the signing of the agreement for cooperation in the areas of security and other bilateral diplomatic issues,further issues related to implementing the elements in the agreement in the areas of security will be seen in the future, Dina added.

He declined to explain the technical details of the implementations of the agreement, but he told The Reporter that the basic principle of the agreement is about supporting each other in the field of diplomacy, politics and other fields of bilateral cooperation.

Source:The Reporter