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Nigeria and Türkiye have reached an agreement for the immediate deployment of 200 Nigerian Special Forces personnel to Türkiye for training, the Minister of Defence, Christopher Musa, said Saturday.
Musa disclosed this in an interview on the sidelines of the 5th Antalya Diplomacy Forum following discussions with his Turkish counterpart, Yasar Guler.
He said Türkiye had allocated a training quota of 200 personnel from Nigeria’s Special Forces, who will be deployed as soon as he returns to Nigeria.
“We have a Special Forces training agreement. Türkiye has agreed to give us 200 Special Forces training, so as soon as I return, we are sending them here for training,” Musa said.
“We will continue to do a lot. There will be exercises. The first exercise is coming up later in the year. So, in so many areas of defence, we are going to work together.”
The minister also said both nations had agreed on the production of joint defence equipment and the transfer of military technology.
Musa said Türkiye has significant defence experience that Nigeria could learn from, noting that Türkiye has fought terrorism for 40 years while Nigeria has battled insurgency for about 17 years.
“Türkiye has improved dramatically with regard to the production of military hardware. Nigeria is still developing, and we have agreed that we are going to partner together so that we have a co-production of some of these items,” he said.
He added that the partnership would extend to training, industrial production, and the exchange of officers and soldiers.
“Because of that, we will move into training, production and improving on our defence, industrial production, and exchange of officers and soldiers.”
