A total of twenty-six (26) participants of Course 40 from the Nigerian Armed Forces Command and Staff College (NAFCSC) Jaji, Nigeria are currently in The Gambia on a week-long regional study tour.
The theme of the study tour is “Agricultural Development and National Security” and tours like these fall within the regional studies module of the college curriculum. The team comprises 26 participants and they are accompanied by their Team Leader, Brig Gen KO Ogundele, Directing and Admin Staff. Over the course of their visit in The Gambia, they will receive briefings and interact with distinguished resource persons from various institutions such as the Ministry of the Agriculture, National Center for Arts and Culture, Department of Horticulture, National Agricultural Research Institute (NARI), Dept. of Livestock Services, Al-Kharafi Farms, and the GAF, etc. The visit will also include a courtesy on the Chief of Defence staff (CDS), GAF and His Excellency the President and Commander-In-Chief of the Armed Forces. The tour will climax with cultural visits and a dinner in honour of course participants to be hosted by the CDS GAF.
Speaking to reporters at the Join Services Headquarter in Banjul, the Team Leader, Brigadier General KO Ogundele, spoke at length on the significance of their tour in The Gambia, while thanking The Gambia Armed Forces (GAF) for the warm welcome accorded to their delegation.
“The Gambia has been a country that is very close to us in Nigeria and apart from The Gambia, we have seven other countries that the students will be visiting for this tour.”
The tour, Brig. Gen. KO Ogundele added is very significant to the students as it will help them know about what obtains in other countries, learn and draw lesson for their own countries.
The commander, Gambia National Army, Brig. Gen. Mamat Cham, who received the participants at his office on behalf of the Chief of Defence Staff, said that the study tour is part of training the students go through at the end of their senior division course.
“Therefore, they are here to do a research on the Agricultural sector in order to see how the development of agriculture affects national security. As you know in our sub-region, there has been lot of illegal migration of our youths going through the ‘backway’ to Europe,” Cham noted.
Brig. Gen. Mamat Cham stated that agriculture is a sector which if developed can add value to our socio economic development not only in the crop production but also in processing them into various forms of products.
