United Against Threats: Nigeria & Niger's Security Cooperation

“We share a lot of common cultural, religious, social, and economic relations with Niger; you would know that over the last couple of years we've had very strong ties. In the economic sense, you would be looking for figures that show the strength and directions of trade between Nigeria and Niger. These defy those kinds of figures because the strong ties are more in the informal sector than they have been in the formal sector. But, with all of this, Nigeria has had very friendly and cordial relations with Niger,” the official asserts.

“The first thing that Nigeria has done with Niger is to say, how do we counter the proliferation of light weapons and small arms? That's key, and there are existing conventions, there are existing agreements, not only within the ECOWAS framework but also international frameworks that guide these kinds of things. But Nigeria and Niger, being close neighbors, have also decided that one of the ways to mitigate the security threats to both countries is to see how we can work together to stop that proliferation. So that's very key,” he says.