Military relationship

The strategic relationship between former rivals South Africa and Nigeria has taken a step towards military cooperation as part of a broader commitment to stability across the
continent.

South Africa's military intelligence chief Lieutenant-General Johannes Motau arrived in Nigeria on Sunday on a five-day official visit as part of a process of establishing military ties between sub-Saharan Africa's two superpowers.

Gani Yaroms, a researcher at Nigeria's National War College told IRIN the visit would involve an "exchange of ideas to see how both countries can offer assistance to one another. It provides a working relationship that can spill over into areas of trade and other economic benefits."

South Africa - Nigeria's principal ideological foe during the apartheid years - "has an advantage in many areas of military hardware and can give technical advise. Basically, as of now, everything has been paralysed and destroyed so in rebuilding we need friendly nations to support training and professionalising the military," Yaroms said.

Nigeria's armed forces have suffered from years of neglect under military rule which politicised and corrupted what was once a proud institution. Since taking power in May last year, Nigeria's democratically elected government has tried to overhaul the service, retiring more than 100 senior
officers and bringing in foreign experts - particularly from the United States - to retrain the military.

There is a long way to go to the days when Nigerian peacekeepers served with distinction in the 1960s Congo crisis, a UN mission that President Olusegun Obasanjo participated in as a young officer. An external audit of the Nigerian military last year found that 75 percent of the army's equipment was faulty or out of commission. Its performance in Liberia and Sierra Leone
where it led a regional peacekeeping mission during the 1990s was rated as "abysmal by any professional standards", the London 'Financial Times' reported. Training procedures have "deteriorated sharply" and conditions in the barracks were described as "deplorable".

The navy has 19 admirals and 34 commodores, but can only put to sea nine main vessels. The air force remains with just a handful of operational aircraft, after 15 years of heavy budgetary allocations to the armed forces under military rule.

However, Nigeria retains significant political influence in Africa. On a visit to South Africa last year, Obasanjo said Nigeria would be willing to play an active role in mediation and peacekeeping in the continent's troubled regions in partnership with South Africa. Later this month, South Africa is to host a second meeting of the Bi-National Commission inaugurated
last year which aims to deepen the strategic alliance between the two countries.