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Med-Or Foundation Holds High-Level Meetings in Abuja on Peace and Security Cooperation
The Med-Or Italian Foundation was received at the office of the Minister of Defence, General Christopher Gwabin Musa, and of the Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Ambassador Bianca Odumegwu-Ojukwu, in Abuja, Nigeria
A Med-Or Italian Foundation delegation visited Nigeria on 13–14 April 2026 for a series of high-level institutional meetings. The delegation — comprising Bernardino León, member of Med-Or’s International Board and Chair of the Med-Or Virtual Academy, and Umberto Tavolato, Executive Director of the Med-Or Italian Foundation for Africa — met with General Christopher Gwabin Musa, Minister of Defence, and Ambassador Bianca Odumegwu-Ojukwu, Minister of State for Foreign Affairs. Discussions focused on training and capacity building in peace and security.
The visit comes at a moment of heightened strategic significance. With over 220 million inhabitants, Nigeria is Africa’s most populous country and one of its fastest-growing economies. It fields one of sub-Saharan Africa’s most capable militaries and has long served as the region’s principal democratic anchor and the driving force behind ECOWAS. Under President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, Nigeria has continued to lead regional dialogue and collective responses to the continent’s growing security challenges.
Those challenges are today more acute than at any point in recent memory. The withdrawal of Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger from ECOWAS has severely strained the cooperative security frameworks that previously underpinned regional counter-terrorism efforts, creating vacuums that jihadist groups have rapidly exploited. Both ISWAP and JNIM have intensified their campaigns, spreading violence southward from the Sahel into Nigerian border areas — confronting Abuja with simultaneous pressure on multiple fronts at precisely the moment when multilateral tools to address it are most weakened.
It is against this backdrop that Med-Or’s engagement with Nigeria’s senior leadership carries particular weight. Italy and Southern Europe share with Nigeria a common strategic neighbourhood — the Sahel and the wider African continent — approaching it from opposite shores. This geographic convergence makes cooperation on peace and security not merely desirable but essential. Med-Or has long held that training and institutional capacity building are indispensable complements to any durable security strategy, and that African–European partnerships are a key pillar of sustainable peace and stability. The Abuja meetings were an expression of that belief and of Med-Or’s commitment to Nigeria.
