The Africa’s premier military institution, the Nigeria Defence Academy (NDA), shall soon start Master’s degree programme in Energy Security Management (MESM) in July 2017.
This was disclosed during the signing of Memorandum of Understanding between the Defence Academy and Umaru Shinkafi Centre for Extractive Policy Research in Kaduna on Thursday.
Speaking during the signing ceremony, the Director General of Umaru Shinkafi Centre, Dr Perisuo Dema said the programme was fashioned as an inter-disciplinary research master’s degree programme which shall run for twenty four months.
According to him, in developed countries like the United Kingdom and United States, the issue of energy is integrated into the nation’s security architecture.
He stated that the curricula of the programme shall also review the impact on Africa’s energy security on changing national policies in the USA, UK and EU.
Dema also stressed that international relations, diplomacy and bilateral/multilateral treaty making whether between African nations intense or between African nations and G-7 member countries or G-20 member countries or G-77 countries or ACP countries or OPEC member countries or OECD member countries or ECT member countries or AU member countries or ECOWAS member countries, would also be reviewed.
“Indeed, this programme is the first of its kind in Africa to be run by any university and institution of learning.”
In his own remarks, the Commandant of the NDA, Major–General Mohammed T. Ibrahim, stated that the centre had made the right choice by collaborating with the Academy.
‘NDA has you know is a brand name that has come to stay because of its pivotal role it has both in the country and extension West Africa. For the past 50 years of our existence, we have been fine tuning and fine tuning. We can now say we are an institution.
‘Therefore, those institutions who collaborated with us should have no iota of doubt that here at the academy we produce first class officers. We do not breed officers of religious, tribal and ethnic inclinations.
“We gave them or impacted on them knowledge on nationalism, patriotism, integrity. ‘In our quest for excellence, we are not resting, we don’t go to sleep. We will continue to dig until we dig gold.”
Also speaking at the occasion, the Academy Provost of the NDA, Professor Azubuike Nwankwo stated that the MESM programme shall help African countries to design robust energy security frameworks for themselves.
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