Abuja — Deputy Commander (Military-Civil relations) of the United African Command (AFRICOM), Ambassador Mary Carlin Yates, who is in the country for the five-day ECOWAS seminar on Security Sector Reform (SSR) has revealed that the headquarters of AFRICOM will remain in Stuttgart, Germany.

She disclosed this when she paid a courtesy call on the Minister of State for Defence, Ademola Seriki.

Yates who did not rule out the possibility of a change in future said, "the decision has been taken that the headquarters of the AFRICOM remains in Stuttgart, Germany for the foreseeable future. General Ward has made this decision and discussed it with the Secretary of Defence.

"It doesn't mean that at some point in the distant future another consideration might be made but right now we are concentrating on building the Command and improving our programmes with our African partners".

Yates who was impressed with the existing military-to-military relationships between the two countries added, "we appreciate the importance of the growth of the military-to-military relations with Nigeria and also the progress we have made in so far as all of your Services have contributed to that. "We are looking forward to more of such opportunities and now that we have new different formations in the Command, we need to find new opportunities on how we can work together."

On the presence of American warship in the Gulf of Guinea, the AFRICOM Deputy Commander said it was a policy decision that has nothing to do with AFRICOM. "The presence of US warships in the Gulf of Guinea was a policy decision with no input from the AFRICOM, but I can say that AFRICOM has worked closely with the nations in the Gulf of Guinea to develop a maritime domain and awareness programme, called the African Partnership Station and that is something Nigeria participated in this year" she stressed.The US Ambassador to Nigeria , Robin Renee-Sander who was part of the delegation, however explained that the presence of the warship was for capacity building programme for African Partnership Station that was attended by several officers from the uniformed services as well as civilian participants from several countries, including participants from West African sub-region in the Gulf and ran for over seven months."It was not a military response from the US but a response from series of request that we have been getting for training and capacity building particularly on maritime issues", she said.