 |
| Lt. Gen. Kenneth Minimah, COAS |
SHOWBIZPLUSng
gathered in Abuja on Sunday that the directive was to give fillip to the war
against terrorism in the country.
It was also learnt that those who attended the
expanded National Security Council meeting in Abuja on Thursday emphasised the
need for the recruitment.
A highly placed military source said
that President Goodluck Jonathan issued the
directive for more recruitment into the army in March after the Chief of Army
Staff, Lt. Gen Kenneth Minimah, had briefed him about the operations of
the army.
The source, who did not want to be named
because he was not authorised to speak on the matter,
said the army did not begin the recruitment
immediately because of the need to expand training facilities in parts of the
country.
It was learnt that the army would
commence the recruitment in May 2014.
Our source said, “We have in
the pipeline, the plan to recruit. We are holding it because we want to upgrade
our facilities.
“The presidential directive to
us to recruit was given in March when the COAS briefed the President. But
the excercise would start next month (May)”
The source added that because
of Boko Haram and other security challenges, the
recruitment would now hold twice a year unlike in the
past when it was done once.
Another source said, “It is true that recruitment
has to be beefed up. The Federal Government has granted that request but
recruitment is not just the number.
“You must note that you cannot produce a soldier
in three days or weeks; this is a serious business involving the
requisite facilities for training.
“If you want to raise your recruitment for
instance, from 1,000 recruits to 2, 000 per annum, you must increase the
facilities for their training.
“And I can tell you that it takes time for
you to increase such facilities. You see, the issue is that the country has
neglected the Army for so long; several public commentators have questioned why
public funds should be spent to maintain a large army when there is no war.
“But is it wise for you to start screaming
where are the soldiers when you did not make arrangement for training just
because there is a threat now?
“For you to increase the number of those
being recruited, you have to increase the structures for recruitment because as
you are recruiting, you are training.
According to him, the structures on
the ground can only accommodate a particular number of recruits.
He said that the best the army did last
year was to increase the timing for recruitment.
“It used to be annual but it is now
going to be twice a year,” the source added.
He said that the recruitment issue
was being taken more seriously because the about
150,000 men and officers of the army had come under stress due to the
involvement of some of them in internal security operations.
The source explained that the
army had assumed some traditional responsibilities of the Nigerian
Police Force, especially in the North –East where many police
facilities had been destroyed by insurgents.
The National Security Adviser, Col. Sambo
Dasuki, had at a recent international seminar on the Observance of
Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law in Internal Security
Operations on February 25, 2014 said that the Nigerian Armed
Forces were engaged in internal operations in 32 states.
Dasuki had said, “As you are well
aware, our great country has been grappling with a plethora of security
challenges occasioning the loss of lives and property.
“These civil disturbances, ethnic tensions
and recently, terrorism and insurgency in the North-East have
engaged the attention of the government and security agencies as concerted
efforts are being made to contain the situation and restore normalcy to the
affected parts of the country.”
It was further gathered that the
expanded National Security Council meeting on Thursday discussed extensively,
the need to boost the capacity of other security agencies like the police, the
State Security Service and the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps.
The council was said to have expressed
concern that the “army was being unnecessary overstreched,” through its
involvement in internal security operations.
When our correspondent contacted the Director of
Defence Information, Maj.-Gen Chris Olukolade, he replied , “I am sorry I can’t
speak on that without contacting the relevant authorities .”
He however promised to
speak with one of our correspondents on the issue on Monday (today).
But a security consultant, Ben Okezie, criticised
the planned recruitment, saying it was late in coming.
He noted that the process might
be hijacked by politicians who were always waiting with a list of candidates.
Okezie said the government should rather recruit
ex-service men and other retired security officers into the army, stressing
that the nation could not afford to wait for the time it would take to train
the fresh recruit while the insurgency rages on.
He said, “This government is like a patient in
the hospital whose psyche is disturbed by the drugs given to him. How can
government recruit civilians into the Army? How long will it take to train
them with many northern youths willing to join Boko Haram?
“Whenever there is recruitment, politicians will
bring a long list of thugs and those they want to use during elections. Is this
not what happened in the Niger Delta during the Amnesty programme?
“Recruiting civilians into the Army now is like
going to the World Cup and you are now going to the village to recruit
footballers. Boko Haram has trained its fighters long ago.”
Okezie advised the government to constitute a
special operation task force made up of serving and retired security personnel
who are indigenes of Borno, Yobe and Adamawa states to provide intelligence on
Boko Haram, since they are conversant with their states of origin.
According to him, the task force members should
be well paid and should be made to know that their mission was to save their
states.
Another security expert, Max Gbanite, observed
that increasing the numbers of soldiers would not help to win the war against
terrorism.
He argued that what the government
needed to do was to declare that the nation was at war and to assess what
it would take to prosecute it.
Gbanite also advised the government
to mobilise the vigilante groups and consider the use of
Unmanned Aerial Vehicle known as drones in the campaign against the insurgents.
He said, “The government must consider the use of
human and electronic equipment for intelligence gathering. We must
localise the war by using vigilance groups or civilian JTF. There is also
a need for geo-spatial intelligence. We need to know whether Boko Haram has
underground tunnels like Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan.
“If they have underground tunnels, drones can’t
see them;so we will need human intelligence. I am disturbed that the sect is
mimicking The Lord Resistance Army of Uganda by kidnapping children.”
Meanwhile, the Defence
Headquarters said on Sunday that the military was satisfied with the ongoing
operations against insurgents in Borno. State.
Its spokesman, Olukolade made this known
during an interview with journalists on the sidelines of a media tour of
military operations in Maiduguri, that the troops had been able to
sustain momentum in terms of the offensive against the terrorists.
He said,” The bases we visited are part of
the responses to the terrorist offensive and that is an achievement; the
military had moved close to where the insurgents are.‘’
The defence spokesman added that the morale
of the soldiers was high, adding that ‘’we are expecting to see more successes
from the troops’’.
The News Agency of Nigeria reported
that the journalists visited military camps in and around
Maiduguri.
The journalists were also taken on night patrols
by the troops which lasted from 9pm to 12.30am . around Maiduguri and its
environs.
The essence of the tour, according to Olukolade,
is to have a first-hand information on the operations of the troops.
No comments:
Post a Comment