Connect with us

News

Asides changing service chiefs, Northern elders urge Buhari to exercise leadership to tackle insecurity

Published

on

Elders in the Northern part of the country on Wednesday said it was not enough for President Muhammadu Buhari to change the nation’s service chiefs, but that he must exercise the kind of leadership expected of the nation’s Commander-in-Chief.

This, they said is capable of taking the nation out of the current security challenges.

The elders, under the aegis of the Northern Elders Forum (NEF), also insisted that the appointment of new service chiefs is not enough to bring the needed change Nigerians expect to see in the country’s war against insurgency and sundry security challenges.

The NEF Spokesman, Dr Hakeem Baba-Ahmed stated this on Wednesday while appearing on Channels Television’s Sunrise Daily programme.

He said: “The key is the president, he has to change his attitude to the defence and security of this country. You cannot run this country with all these security challenges and maintain the distance that he maintains with what is going on. You listen to the president and his spokespeople are telling you the situation is better than it was in 2015. It is a very disturbing thing when you hear this.

“There are no suicide bombings now but the population of Nigerians living under Boo Haram is large, huge and unacceptable,”

Ripples Nigeria reported that President Buhari accepted the resignation and immediate retirement from service of the former service chiefs led by General Gabriel Olonisakin, the erstwhile Chief of Defense Staff.

Their resignation followed months of agitations by Nigerians from all walks of life for the President to sack them following their inability to find solutions to prevailing spate of insecurity in the country.

The new service chiefs, as announced by Buhari’s Special Adviser on Media and Publicity, Femi Adesina, are Major-General Leo Irabor as Chief of Defence Staff; Major-General Ibrahim Attahiru as Chief of Army Staff; Rear Admiral A.Z Gambo as Chief of Naval Staff; and Air-Vice Marshal I.O Amao as Chief of Air Staff.

The NEF, however said that the replacement might not be effective if the president leads the new crop of service chiefs the same way he led the former commanders.

Baba-Ahmed said: “At last, it appeared that the President has considered that it is time for him to appoint new service chiefs.

“Our hope is that he is not just responding to public opinion but he himself acknowledges the fact that all service chiefs have ran out of steam. Their leadership did not produce the results it was intended to produce.

Read also: Don’t celebrate change of service chiefs yet, Melaye tells Nigerians

“But we don’t the nation to be carried away. It is important that the Armed Forces have a new leadership but they have a huge task and it has to start from the president.

“We have a Commander-In-Chief of the Armed Forces. The president has responsibility to lead the new service chief in a better way than he did in the past. He needs to recognise the fact that he has a role.

“He (Buhari) needs to have a closer eye on what is going on and hold the new service chiefs accountable to make sure that the changes are brought into the military in terms of conduct, professionalism, integrity, morale of the fighting forces and change in tactics.

“If these new service chiefs are led in the same manner the president exercised the distance between him and the conflict that the military is fighting, we are going to have the same problem.”

He however opined that Nigerians will know in the next seven months if the new service chiefs are the right choices.

Join the conversation

Opinions

Support Ripples Nigeria, hold up solutions journalism

Balanced, fearless journalism driven by data comes at huge financial costs.

As a media platform, we hold leadership accountable and will not trade the right to press freedom and free speech for a piece of cake.

If you like what we do, and are ready to uphold solutions journalism, kindly donate to the Ripples Nigeria cause.

Your support would help to ensure that citizens and institutions continue to have free access to credible and reliable information for societal development.

Donate Now