{"id":74190,"date":"2025-08-26T06:31:09","date_gmt":"2025-08-26T06:31:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/?p=74190"},"modified":"2025-08-26T06:31:09","modified_gmt":"2025-08-26T06:31:09","slug":"ecowas-to-raise-260000-counter-terrorism-force","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/2025\/08\/26\/ecowas-to-raise-260000-counter-terrorism-force\/","title":{"rendered":"ECOWAS to Raise 260,000 Counter-Terrorism Force"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>By Olokuta Rofiat<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), has unveiled plans to raise a 260,000-strong rapid deployment counter-terrorism force to curb rising insecurity across the region.<\/p>\n<p>ECOWAS Commission President, Dr. Omar Touray, represented by Ambassador Abdel-Fattah Musah, disclosed this on Monday in Abuja at the inaugural African Chiefs of Defence Staff Summit.<\/p>\n<p>He said the force will confront terrorist groups that have turned the Sahel into the world\u2019s deadliest hotspot, responsible for 51 per cent of global terrorism deaths in 2024.<\/p>\n<p>An annual budget of $2.5 billion has been proposed, with Defence and Finance Ministers of member states set to meet in Abuja on Friday to finalise funding.<\/p>\n<p>The force will complement the African Union Standby Force under the African Peace and Security Architecture (APSA), with ECOWAS appealing for UN and international support.<\/p>\n<p>The initiative comes after ECOWAS activated a 5,000-man Standby Force in March 2025 and follows earlier proposals for smaller brigades.<\/p>\n<p>However, it faces hurdles as Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger, who quit ECOWAS to form the Alliance of Sahel States are building their own 5,000-strong force.<\/p>\n<p>Despite this split, ECOWAS leaders insist the 260,000-man deployment is vital to restore regional stability and protect member states from extremist violence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Olokuta Rofiat The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), has unveiled plans to raise a 260,000-strong rapid deployment counter-terrorism force to curb rising insecurity across the region. ECOWAS Commission President, Dr. Omar Touray, represented by Ambassador Abdel-Fattah Musah, disclosed this on Monday in Abuja at the inaugural African Chiefs of Defence Staff Summit. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":74193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[172,249],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-74190","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-world-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74190","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/32"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=74190"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74190\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":74194,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74190\/revisions\/74194"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/74193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74190"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74190"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74190"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}