President Bola Tinubu left Abuja on Sunday for Rome, Italy, where he will attend the Aqaba Process heads of state and government level meeting.
According to a statement from presidential spokesman Bayo Onanuga, the Aqaba Process is a counter-terrorism initiative launched by King Abdullah II of Jordan in 2015.
The meeting is being co-chaired by the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan and the Italian government, with a focus on the security crisis in West Africa.
The meeting, scheduled to begin on October 14, will gather “heads of state and government, senior intelligence and military officials from African countries, and representatives of intergovernmental and non-governmental organisations to discuss the evolving security challenges in West Africa,” Onanuga stated.
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He noted that the initiative recognizes the “complex security challenges confronting West Africa, including the expansion of terrorist networks, the growing crime-terror nexus and the increasing overlap between land-based terrorism in the Sahel and the maritime piracy in the Gulf of Guinea.”
The statement confirmed that participants will exchange assessments of the current security landscape in West Africa” and promote cooperation between regional and international partners to handle “cross-border security challenges.
The focus will be on developing strategies to combat the “terror threat on land and the sea, as well as ideas to “coordinate efforts to combat online radicalisation and disrupt digital networks that facilitate terrorist propaganda and recruitment.”6
In addition to the plenary sessions, President Tinubu will engage in bilateral talks with other leaders to explore solutions to the growing security challenges in the subregion.
Accompanying the President are several top government officials, including the Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Bianca Ojukwu; Minister of Defence, Mohammed Badaru; National Security Adviser (NSA), Nuhu Ribadu; and the Director-General of the National Intelligence Agency (NIA), Mohammed Mohammed.
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