Kingsley Omonobi
2 August 2008
Chief of Naval Staff, Vice Admiral Ganiyu Adekeye at the weekend, called on the United States Naval authorities to assist the Nigerian military with training in the area of Space technology and other relevant areas especially capacity building to ensure a better preparedness for the challenges ahead.
Admiral Adekeye who represented the Chief of Defence Staff, General Owoye Azazi when the Superintendent of the US Naval Academy, Vice Admiral Jeffery Fowler visited him, disclosed that the US has been very forthcoming in the area of training cooperation and joint military excises recalling African Endeavour Interoperability exercise involving 31 countries that just ended in Abuja.
"I want to thank the US for the amount of assistance in terms of capacity building, and training in relevant areas we have been receiving. We have had it so good with the US that the joint exercise we've had cannot be quantified. But Like Oliver Twist, we still need more opportunities. We need assistance in the area of engineering and Space technology".
Earlier, Vice Admiral Fowler disclosed that he was in Nigeria to further boost the security cooperation between Nigeria and the US noting "We are here to seek not only training exchanges, but offer opportunities for anybody in Nigeria who will like to join the Academy".
"Our focus is on leadership, engineering and the sciences. We spend lots of time, resources in strong academic programmes. We have trained three Nigerian officers so far but we are willing to train more because we want to ensure enhanced security between our two navies especially as it pertains to better security for our maritime operations".
Meanwhile, the Council for the regulation of engineering in Nigeria (COREN), has solicited the support of the Navy in carrying out the enormous mandate of COREN in regulating engineering practice in the country noting that this can be done by ensuring that her engineering assignments are handled by registered engineers.
Registrar of the council, Engr. Felix Atume who made the call when he visited the CNS in Abuja, disclosed that the Nigerian Navy Dockyard in Lagos is a classical example of an engineering outfit that COREN cannot ignore adding that the body recognizes the crucial role of engineering personnel in the armed forces, thus it recently gave full accreditation of engineering courses at the Nigeria Defence academy with the hope that graduates will be actively involved in the practice of the profession.
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