Members of the Presidential Committee on Small Arms and Light Weapons on Friday held a meeting with Chief of the Conventional Arms Branch, United Nations (UN) Office for Disarmament Affairs, Mr. Daniel Prins in New York, both parties reiterating the importance of international cooperation to countering terrorism in Nigeria and other similarly challenged countries.
Chairman of the committee, Ambassador E.E Imohe led two other committee members — Ambassador Babagana Wakil and Albert Opelusi — to the meeting, which held at the Disarmament Section of the UN Headquarters.
As well as serving as a fact-finding mission to the designated UN Office established to address, among other things, the menace of illicit trade, acquisition, transfer and use of small arms and light weapons, the meeting also explored areas of collaboration and cooperation between the UN and the Presidential Committee.
The hour-long meeting with the conventional weapons disarmament chief and his team discussed extensively on the need for the aspects of assistance and co-operation, as highlighted in the United Nations Programme of Action (UN PoA) on the illicit trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons, to be extended to states faced with the menace of such criminal acquisition by unauthorized state actors.
It also focused on the application of the important concept of “Stockpile Management” as a significant component of small arms control, including ammunition control and its stockpile management in the work of the committee; as well as the structure or content of assistance available and which could be extended to newly constituted National Body/Commission/Agency on Small Arms by the United Nations; and how developing UN member states with large population could improve on reporting as a component of the PoA.
Ambassador Imohe stressed the importance of the UN PoA as a confidence-building measure to assist UN member states address the menace of illicitly acquired small arms. These weapons, he stated, contributed significantly to destabilization.
“They are the largest contributors to the weak security situations in many fragile States, and have been widely acknowledged as the choice weapons of mayhem across the globe, but particularly in Africa,” Imohe observed, calling for assistance from the global body towards the destruction of confiscated weapons and to collaborate in dismantling the template from which insecurity could gain its ugly momentum.
He further conveyed the desire and readiness of President Goodluck Jonathan to rein in on the threat and to squarely address the issues of illicitly acquired small arms and light weapons in Nigeria and by extension, the ECOWAS sub-region.
According to the chairman, the rich background of members of the committee places it in good stead to address its mandate, but still required the cooperation of an established organ like the structure already in place at the UN to fully realise its potential.
He promised Nigeria’s readiness to work with the United Nations and other member states to strengthen existing UN mechanisms for addressing the proliferation of illicit Small Arms and Light Weapons (SALW), which fuel conflicts and aid destabilization of societies.
Responding, Prins assured the team of the UN’s readiness to collaborate with Nigeria, highlighting Nigeria’s enviable role in the UN Small Arms Process. He also seized the opportunity to commend the efforts of Nigeria’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations, H.E. Professor U. Joy Ogwu in this regard, recalling that Ambassador Ogwu, as President of the Second Review Conference on the Implementation of the UN Programme of Action on Small Arms and Light Weapons, led member states to successfully adopt an outcome document at the end of the two-week conference on 7th September 2013.
He promised the support of his Office as well as the United Nations Regional Centre for Peace and Disarmament (UNREC), Lome, Togo to assist with training needs. He stressed the importance of “Reporting” as mandated by the PoA, as a sine qua nom for accessing technical assistance and other useful cooperation mechanisms offered by the United Nations and other donor agencies.
The chairman and the UN team both acknowledged the need to further deepen this process and promised to sustain the momentum through the known channels at the Mission
