UN agency seeks action on arms trafficking, terrorists’ movement

The United Nations Regional Centre for Peace and Disarmament in Africa, has called on the Federal Government to take proactive measures to stop the illicit trafficking in arms and movement of terrorists across borders.

The agency urged African countries to step up national efforts and bilateral, regional and international cooperation to improve border and customs control in order to prevent and detect the movement of terrorists and arms, explosives and nuclear, weapons and materials between countries.

The Director, UNREC, Ms. Olatokunbo Ige, said this on Friday in Abuja during  a  meeting on improving cross-border sub-regional cooperation in small and light weapons control under existing regional and sub-regional instruments.

She recalled that the UN member-states adopted the United Nations Global Counter-terrorism Strategy on September 8, 2006, but regretted that despite this global framework, the Sahel continued to be confronted with the destabilising effects of the widespread proliferation and availability of arms from within the region and beyond.

Ige said, “UNREC hopes that this meeting, convening experts from different courts and judicial mechanisms from the four participating countries, as well as the UN, will constitute a first platform for open information and experience exchange.’’

Shoyoye, who echoed Hannes Diedericks’ remarks on the challenges facing the multinational cement company bordering on lack of gas supply and foreign exchange, appealed to the government to help investors to fight   challenges that affect manufacturing industries in order to remain in business.

He said, “We can say we have some challenges, but the major issue is lack of gas supply because of oil and gas pipelines vandalism in the Niger Delta.

“Today, because of what we have talked about, we are using a mixture of gas and black oil for our operations, which is highly costly. It reduced   our production capacity from 100 per cent to 75 per cent in Ewekoro plants. This has been on since February.

“During the month of May, we had to stop production in Sagamu plant for six weeks. Before then, we had been producing 3,000 tonnes per day, but now, we are doing about 1,000 per day because of fuel issue. But, I want to say that we will soon get over it because of our investment in alternative source of energy in our plants.”