By Ruby Leo
The Chief of Defence Staff, Gen. Lucky Irabor has lamented that military personnel have been overstretched and are currently involved in the internal security of all the 36 states of the country.
Speaking at the maiden event of the 21st Century Chronicle roundtable themed ‘Going for Broke: Fighting Insecurity in Nigeria’, Irabor, who spoke on the topic ‘Armed Forces and the War against Insecurity in Nigeria’, advocated more resources for defence and security to meet the yearning needs.
According to him though it would have been appropriate to recruit more Nigerians into the Armed Forces, the process itself is resource intense driven, as issues of accommodation, retirement, family and the mental wellbeing of the soldier needs to be put into consideration.
He said: “I know that almost all of us here believe that the military must be in every inch of our land and that is not possible.
“For us to be able to do that, not only do we need to increase in number, we have to increase the capacity of the police and other security agencies to be able to play their policing roles such that the areas that the military has been able to liberate, or has brought some calmness, we should be able to leave the police and other security agencies to build upon.
“Of course, if we don’t have the support of the police to be able to build upon, we’ll be having issues. It’ll now become a cycle of where the military is involved in policing.
“As the Chief of Defence Staff, I’m looking forward to a day when all of us, soldiers, would come back to barracks and engage in core military duties – defending the territorial integrity of our nation.
“Today, close to 70 to 80% of our troops are on the field all year round, and I think we must begin to reshape it.
“I’m mentioning this not because we’re not working on it, but because we also need to understand that when there are calls for resource enhancement either for the understanding of the national assembly and the presidency, we’re going to put forward such demands.”
He also expressed concern that security issued had been politicized and ethicized in the country.
“We’ve absorbed a good number of the Civilian JTF. It’s an ongoing process. However, deploying them back where they come from does not fit in completely with our code of ethics. Otherwise, we’ll no longer be an Armed Forces, they are better suited for the police. That kind of arrangement is best for the police.
“That’s the reason I join those advocating community policing. Yes, there’s a community policing framework currently, but it has to be escalated.
A former Director, Defence Information, Major-Gen. Chris Olukolade (rtd), noted that it takes a lot of time to produce a soldier, airman or seaman.
He said Nigeria did not recruit soldiers when it should, during stability, but rather retired several soldiers due to paucity of funds.
Earlier Dr Mairo Mandara of the Children Investment Fund Foundation called for the appropriate use of resources while advocating for punishment for personnels found guilty of fraud.
She added that the armed forces should strongly consider absorbing the Civilian Joint Task Force into its services to forestall future security challenges when the force are disengaged from their present occupation.