THE Chief of Defence Staff, Air Chief Marshal Oluseyi Petinrin has raised the alarm over the spillover effect of the instability in Libya to the sub-region, saying that all hands must be on deck to avoid the destabllisation of the region.Consequently, he said that in recent times, countries in the West African sub-region had had their individual and collective challenges to security and defence as some countries have risen up to the challenges by beefing up security in their domains.Speaking at the 29th meeting of the ECOWAS Committee of Chiefs of Defence Staff in Abuja on Tuesday, Petinrin, who is also the chairman of the committee, noted that the recent upsurge in the act of terror being experienced in several countries, including Nigeria, required urgent attention.Also, piracy and sea robbery, which he said were thriving in the maritime sector of some member-states within the Gulf of Guinea and small arms proliferation, political instability and internal security challenges and their socio-economic and political implications were urgent problems that the Committee of Chiefs of Defence Staff needed to tackle.Petinrin disclosed that the committee is making inroad in the security sector reforms ongoing in Guinea Bissau as well as the issue of the ECOWAS Standby Force.He said that the spate of terrorist attacks within the region and their implications had necessitated sensitisation on counter terrorism strategies.He noted the widely held view that threats to national security and regional peace and security in West Africa were deeply rooted in political, social and economic factors and they were issues that the meeting should address in order to avert the negative consequences of these threats.According to him, 'our individual and collective experiences must be harnessed and brought to bear on each agenda item with the sole aim of arriving at decisions that will not only promote but also allow for member-states and our people to flourish and prosper.'In his remark, the ECOWAS Commissioner for Political Affairs, Peace and Security, Major General Mohamane Toure, noted that the meeting was taking place at a period considered that peace and democratic governance were gradually becoming the guiding principles in the sub-region.He said that on the sea shores of the Gulf of Guinea, piracy and other criminal related acts were becoming regular, threatening local and international ships and their cargoes transiting in Benin and lately Togo bays, thereby compounding the unresolved issues of trans-shipment of drugs transiting in the Gulf of Bissau and attacks on the petroleum sector in the Delta and ECOWAS areas.
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