Following President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s appointment of new service chiefs on Friday, regional groups like Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF), Afenifere, the North Central Elders’ Forum, and others have urged them to recruit more personnel.
According to them, the new service chiefs should train their officers in intelligence gathering and go after terrorists and bandits in their enclaves.
At the weekend, President Bola Tinubu replaced former Chief of Defence Staff General Christopher Musa with General Olufemi Oluyede.
The president also appointed Major-General W. Shaibu as the new Chief of Army Staff, Air Vice Marshall S.K. Aneke as the new Chief of Air Staff, and Rear Admiral I. Abbas as the new Chief of Naval Staff.
Chief of Defence Intelligence Major-General E.A.P Undiendeye retained his position.
Reacting to the changes, the director of security, Salute Nigeria Initiative, Comrade Salihu Dantata Mahmud, urged the new service chiefs to carry out internal restructuring, embark on an interactive tour, approve proper intelligence training for officers and men, and improve welfare packages to boost their morale.
This is coming just as the former secretary-general of the Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF), Anthony Sani, has also urged the service chiefs to carry out massive recruitment.
“Our security challenges stem from insufficiently equipped, inadequately trained, and motivated personnel to secure the nation. The new service chiefs should addressee these,” Sani added.
ACF Express Hope In New Service Chiefs
The apex northern sociocultural group, ACF, said its thought about the new service chiefs is more of hope, as opposed to just expectations, that they will rev up the fight against terrorism, banditry, and the pervasive state of insecurity in the land.
According to the forum’s national publicity secretary, Professor Tukur Muhammad Baba, “citizens want to see the consolidation of the recent successes in the fight against all perpetrators of violence anywhere and everywhere in the country, particularly in our rural areas where their activities are crippling rural political economies and livelihoods.”
New Service Chiefs Must Deploy Strategies To Tackle Terrorism- Afenifere
Setting the agenda for the new service chiefs, the Pan-Nigerian socio-political organisation Afenifere charged the newly appointed Service Chiefs of the Nigerian Armed Forces to immediately deploy strategies to deal with the latest terrorism antics in the country.
Afenifere stated, “It is a welcome development in this crucial time when the bandits and terrorists have upped their game.”
The organisation backed President Bola Tinubu’s appointment of the Service Chiefs and noted that the changes made by the presidency are “regarded as one of the strategies that needs to be taken at this crucial moment.”
Speaking with LEADERSHIP in Akure, the Ondo State capital, the organisation’s national publicity secretary, Comrade Jare Ajayi, decried the sacking of communities in Kogi and Kwara states and other areas, particularly in the Middle Belt.
According to him, “These sorts of things like that were usually in the Middle East and the North East before and part of Niger State. But now, it is coming down, meaning decisive action must be taken. So this change of the service chiefs by the presidency is regarded as one of the strategies that needs to be taken at this crucial moment.
“This is a welcome development. And Afenifere expects that the new Service Chiefs must devise strategies that ensure that they perform and discharge their duties responsibly to not only control the terrorists but also put a stop to their antics.”
The apex Yoruba group, however, called on the government to ensure that the necessary equipment is provided and deployed so that they can effectively perform their responsibilities.
Ajayi also noted that the government must boost the morale of security agency officers.
He said,” Equally important is that reports have been made of inter-collaboration. So, the DSS and other intelligence organs within the security agencies should be boosted to ensure that there is inter-agency collaboration among the security agencies.
“Going by the report of where military troops deployed to specific areas to capture corrupt bandits are ambushed, the information about the movement has been said to have been leaked, probably by insiders. That’s another area that needs to be focused on.”
Finally, Afenifere called on communities in several parts of the country to be more inward-looking and to identify conspirators or collaborators among themselves.
“Reports had it this morning, for example, that the security agencies in the Niger State, luckily, were able to capture two people, a woman and a man, who have been discovered to be supplying the bandits with weapons, guns, bullets, and all that.
“I mean, these people are civilians and live among them. It’s not very unlikely that nobody in their area will have suspected how they acted.
“When such a thing is seen, such people should be reported. And we are calling also on the authorities, the security agents, particularly the police, to whom the report will be supplied, to treat it confidentially and use it to capture the perpetrators and protect those who give them information.”
Northern Elders, Political Scientists, Others Set Agenda For New Service Chiefs
The North Central States Elders Council (NCSEC) has urged the new Service Chiefs to take immediate action towards eradicating banditry and other violent crimes nationwide.
The director general of the Council, Rt. Hon. Audu Sule urged the new Service Chiefs to employ new strategies to fight insecurity.
He applauded President Bola Tinubu for finding military personnel from Kogi and Nasarawa states worthy of the appointments. He urged them to use their track records to ensure Nigerians sleep with their eyes closed.
“As experts in their fields of endeavours, we, the NCSEC, are appealing to the new Service Chiefs to put their heads together, go the extra mile and use their wealth of experience to flush out bandits terrorising our people out of the entire country, to enable farmers in the north central states and others to go back to their farming work”
“We want the Service Chiefs also to arrest and reveal the identities of bandits’ financiers to serve as a deterrent to would-be financiers.
“On behalf of the Council, we want to pledge our unalloyed support to the Service Chiefs. We shall continue to give them the necessary support to enable them to succeed in the task ahead,” Sule added.
For his part, Prof. Hassan Saliu, the national president of the Nigeria Political Scientists Association (NPSA), said the agenda for the new Service Chiefs is already defined, adding that they are expected to conclude the war against insecurity.
Also, the Foundation for Peace Professionals (PeacePro) has called on the new Service Chiefs to immediately embark on a six-month national security cleansing plan to identify and eliminate threats to the nation’s peace, unity, and sovereignty.
Abdulrazaq Hamzat, the executive director of PeacePro,said the new Service Chiefs must have a clear and singular agenda.
“They must conduct a comprehensive national assessment of all internal and external security threats confronting the country and take coordinated action to neutralise them,” he said.
CLO, MBF Urge New Service Chiefs To Take Battle To Terrorists, Bandits’ Enclave
While setting the agenda for the new Service Chiefs, the North Central coordinator of Civil Liberties Organisation (CLO), Mr Steve Aluko, said they should urgently take the battle to the terrorists’ and bandits’ enclaves.
According to Aluko, the Service Chiefs should build synergy with other sister security agencies and prioritise intelligence gathering.
Also speaking on the agenda for the new Service Chiefs, the president of the Middle Belt Forum (MBF), Dr Bitrus Pogu, urged the new appointees to copy a trait of the former Service Chiefs.
According to Pogu, the former defence chief Gen Christopher Musa always gave an order to his soldiers not to wait for command whenever they saw terrorists attacking the community before acting.
“The former CDS is said to have urged his soldiers to defend the community first, stressing that anybody who stopped them from doing so should be reported.
“We have not heard of this kind of order coming from any CDS in the history of this country. The new Service Chiefs should build on the foundation laid by the former CDS.
“They should make sure that insurgency or terrorism is not handled with kid gloves. They should be ruthlessly dealt with because they are working against the state.”
“If terrorism is to be rooted out of the country, the former CDS has already laid a solid foundation that should be a guiding principle for the new service chiefs.
“They should not fear any terrorist groups or organisations. If they want to repent, let them come out and drop their arms so that we have peace.
“Any soldier found compromising security should also be dealt with so that there will be rule of law in the country. Unless they do that, we will not have the peace we desire,” Pogu said.
New Service Chief Needs To Overhaul The System -MOSIEND
The Movement for the Survival of the Izon Ethnic Nationality in the Niger Delta (MOSIEND) has called on the newly appointed service chiefs to overhaul the system.
MOSIEND national president, Dr Kennedy West, who made the call in a chat with LEADERSHIP in Port Harcourt yesterday, also called on the new service chiefs to look into the welfare of their personnel.
West said, “I think the first thing they need to do is overhaul the system. They should also look at the welfare of the service men and align it with international standards.
