Insurgency: Changing Service Chiefs not enough to tackle security challenges – Rtd Air Vice Marshal
Admin Air Vice Marshal Adebola Adekunle (Rtd), believes changing the country’s service chiefs may not be enough to tackle insecurity in Nigeria.
The security consultant while admitting that there have been calls for the reshuffling of Nigeria’s security apparatus, said President Muhammadu Buhari’s unwillingness to change the service chiefs could be because he (Buhari) knows more about the country’s security challenges.
He said this on Tuesday during his appearance on Channels Television’s News At 10.
“With the benefit of hindsight, I know that the president gets briefings on a regular basis which all of us who are not directly involved in running the Armed Forces are not privy to, ” the former Chief of Training and Operations, Nigerian Air Force, said.
“If the President has been hearing all this hue and cry about changing the service chiefs and he has refused to change them, he must know something that we don’t know.”
President Buhari is not convinced that changing the security chiefs will make a difference in taming insecurity in Nigeria even though Nigerians want a more secured nation, he explained.
According to him, “If the President feels that changing the service chiefs will make the difference, I am sure he will effect a change. But he is not convinced as we speak that changing them will make the difference that is why he has not effected a change.”
Mr Adebola said since tackling insecurity is one of the cardinal points of the Buhari government, there would have been a change of service chiefs if that will make a difference.
He said while changing the service chiefs may be part of plans to re-egineer the nation’s security apparatus, it will not make the country an “Eldorado.”
“The impression is being created that the moment we change the service chiefs, everything will be resolved over night and Nigeria will become an Eldorado,” he added.
“I’m just concerned that we will be preparing ourselves for disappointment again. Let’s not create the impression that the service chiefs are the problem right now.”
On Tuesday, Buhari ordered the re-engineering of the nation’s entire security apparatus.
This was according to the National Security Adviser (NSA), Babagana Monguno who briefed journalists on after the third National Security Council meeting in 2020 chaired by President Buhari at the Presidential Villa in Abuja.
The nation’s security adviser called for calm, promising that the President along with the Service Chiefs is doing a lot to handle the insecurity in the northwest and north-central states.
