Mr Ajuri Ngelale, Senior Special Assistant to President Muhammadu Buhari on Public Matters from the office of the Vice President has hypothetically stated that not even a divine army would be able to defeat Boko Haram and bandits in Nigeria.
TheNewsGuru.com (TNG) reports Mr Ngelale was trying to clarify if President Buhari meant he will fire service chiefs when in his New Year’s Day speech he talked about re-energizing and reorganizing the security apparatus and personnel of the armed forces and the police.
While the Presidential aide did not confirm if Buhari will sack the service chiefs, the President did give a hint, saying that even if security forces had shown professionalism so far, there was a need to move to a more proactive and preemptive posture to ensure that the sorts of traumatic incidents happening in the country do not become a norm.
“When we talk about security, the President has been very open about it. In fact, he stated just a few days ago that for us, when we look at public analysis in the country, there is a tendency to make very complex situations oversimplified. And I think one of the things we have seen is that there is this notion that has been floated out in public discourse that if we just sack security chiefs that will solve all of our problems.
“What the President has said is that the issue of security, the issue of national defence is deeper than just a few individuals who have been task with overseeing critical our armed forces that it goes into issues of capacity building, it goes into issues of regional co-operation with our neighbours.
“Even if we had [this is just a hypothetical statement] a divine army, that was perfectly run with everything perfect, and we did everything right in dealing with these terrorists, we have to understand that as long as these terrorists have a safe harbour, if they can go to Chad, if they can go to Cameroun, and they could go to Niger Republic, and re-gather themselves, recharge themselves, and train themselves, just to come and spring an attack and then run back, then, we are going to continue to have problems irrespective of how effective our armed forces have been. That is really important to understand,” Ngelale said when he appears on TVC News Nigeria This Morning TV show.
Meanwhile, in his New Year’s Day speech, President Buhari highlighted some of the key priority areas for the year 2021 to include re-energizing and reorganizing the security apparatus and personnel of the armed forces and the police with a view to enhance their capacity to engage, push back and dismantle the operations of both internal and external extremist and criminal groups waging war against our communities in some parts of the country.
“In line with the current security challenges, we are facing as a nation, I would like to reiterate the promise I made recently when over 300 of our boys abducted from Government Science Secondary School, Kankara were successfully rescued by our security operatives.
“The professionalism shown by our Security Forces and the collaboration from all stakeholders across both State and Federal Governments that led to the successful rescue of the boys is proof that Nigeria has the internal capacity to decisively deal with terror attacks on our citizens.
“However, we recognize that we rapidly have to move to a more proactive and preemptive posture to ensure that these sorts of traumatic incidents do not become a norm. Our administration is fully aware of the responsibility we have to protect the lives and property of all Nigerians, and we will not relent in learning and adapting to changing threats to our national security and civic wellbeing,” the President said.