Army Chief Seeks International Support To Protect National Territory

Chief of Army Staff (COAS), Lieutenant General Taoreed Lagbaja, has called for international collaboration to protect the nation’s territorial integrity.

He made the call on Saturday, June 20, 2024, when he joined 12 other chiefs of national armies across Africa at the symposium “Peace, Security and the Commitment of the Youth,” organised and hosted by the French Army Chief of Staff, General Schill Pierre, at the Golf de Cicé-Blossac in Rennes, France.

A statement by the director of Army Public Relations, Major General Onyema Nwachukwu, said General Schill, in his opening remarks, disclosed that the symposium aims at enabling the French Army to change its mode of engagement with foreign partners, particularly in Africa, to transit from solely military, to an all-encompassing, mutually beneficial approach to relationship cum engagement.

General Lagbaja’s presentation at the symposium on the topic, “Armies and the Protection of their National Territory: Legal Framework, Issues and Challenges,” highlighted the issues and challenges armies contend with in protecting their national territory.

The army chief spotlighted the applicability of local and international laws and conventions in the face of the harrowing struggle against non-state actors and states, who chose to either ignore or treat them with levity and further exacerbated by the existence of cultural affinities across international boundaries orchestrated by arbitrary boundary delineation.

He called for broad-spectrum collaborative efforts beyond the Armed Forces as an imperative for addressing contentious issues of how armies can better protect their national territory.

The statement said the COAS and his Ivorian counterpart were the only foreign delegates granted the honour of presenting papers at the symposium.

The COAS, accompanied by the Commandant Nigerian Defence Academy (NDA) Maj Gen John Ochai and other members of his delegation, later attended the commissioning ceremony of cadets into the French Army at the Saint-Cyr Military Academy, Coetquida.

The NDA commandant also initiated bilateral engagements on cadets training on the sideline of the symposium.