The President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), has accepted an invitation from the Czech President, Milos Zeman, to visit his country in 2022.
This is as he welcomed the Czech leader’s interest in more robust collaboration and partnership in military cooperation and especially in equipment to enhance Nigeria’s security capabilities.
Buhari and his Czech counterpart, who held a bilateral meeting on Thursday in Brussels, Belgium, renewed mutual commitment towards the Joint Commission mechanism to enhance a qualitative relationship, diplomatically and people to people.
Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Publicity, Garba Shehu, disclosed this in a statement he signed on Friday titled, ‘President Buhari and other G4 members evolve new strategies for conflict resolution in Africa’.
Zeman, who renewed his country’s trust in Buhari and Nigeria—as the most important ECOWAS state and one of Africa’s greatest—specifically expressed interest in a more robust collaboration and partnership in military cooperation, especially in equipment to enhance Nigeria’s security capabilities.
The Czech leader noted that his country would assume the Presidency of the European Union in July.
He also expressed a similar readiness to partner with Nigeria in the fields of Agriculture and Health and has decided to convene a pre-assumption of EU Presidency consultative meeting to help set early agenda for her Presidency.
He, therefore, invited Nigeria’s Minister of Health to attend the consultative meeting of highly respected countries in Prague in May 2022 and also extended an invitation to President Buhari to visit his country in the course of 2022.
While Buhari accepted the two invitations in principle, assuring that the proposals would be considered through appropriate Diplomatic channels, he directed the Minister of Health, Dr Osagie Ehanire, to attend the meeting in May.
On the revitalisation of the relationship between the two countries and deepening partnerships in military cooperation procurement of equipment as well as in Agriculture, the Nigerian leader assured his guest he would work with the proposals.
Meanwhile, President Buhari, his Algerian and South African counterparts, and the Prime Minister of Ethiopia under the auspices of the “G4” have resolved to strengthen the platform for the resolution of the various issues confronting the African continent.
At another meeting on Thursday in Brussels, Belgium, ahead of the 6th EU-AU Summit taking place in the country, the four African leaders used the opportunity to discuss crisis areas on the continent to come up with practical and effective solutions.
Buhari and his colleagues stressed the need to reinvigorate the G4 within the African Union as a platform for bringing African countries closer, coordinating actions and reactions for the whole continent in a more proactive manner, and looking at how decisions in the AU could be better implemented.
They also agreed to convene a formal summit to chart a road map for Africa in the coming months.
The G4 platform, an initiative of the Ethiopian Prime Minister, Abiy Ahmed, was set up towards discussing and proffering solutions and aggregating positions to ensure that the African Union carries its work forward successfully, efficiently, and quickly too.
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