18th February, 2021
By Kingsley Okoye
Former Nigeria’s Chief of Army Staff, Lt.Gen. Tukur Buratai (retd) says it’s a mistake to think that the military action alone is what is needed to tackle the problem of insecurity confronting the country.
Buratai spoke when he appeared before the Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs for confirmation of his appointment as a non career ambassador by President Muhammadu Buhari.
Aside the military action, Buratai said political, economic and social factors were responsible for fuelling the security challenge over the years, adding that those factors must be addressed.
“Development should be progressive,there should be roads every where, employment, schools, hospitals.
“There are so many ungovernable spaces untill those spaces,locations are penetrated with roads infrastructure, rail,school, and we carry every body along, and a robust foreign and diplomatic polices pursed and sustained to solve issues of insecurity,” he said.
“This security challenge is something that started more than 30, or 40 years ago.
“It had penetrated the communities, the terrorists have won the communities to their side, that is why you see a small hamlet keeping Boko Haram in those locations,so it is a complex issue.
“So it requires the whole government approach to to deal with this.
Also speaking after the screening, retired Gen. Gabriel Olonisakin, former Chief of Defence Staff told the committee that solutions to security challenges must be applied using a multi dimensional approach.
“We are talking about hybrid warfare where everyone is involved.It is a national approach that is needed, for us to surmount insecurity.
“Three years ago I conducted a research on the forests in the country, I realised that we have about 1,000 forest reserves.
” And I said to them three years ago,that our next crisis will be in the forest, some Nigerian governors were invited, we told them because most of the forest are the perogatives of the states, the state took over all the forest reserves.
“And I said to them we have to protect the forest, that the next programme will be the forest,” he said.
Olonisakin added:“So it is a multi-faceted approach, that will require everyone to come on board for us to be able to address insecurity.
“You can never have enough, either weapons, personnel, but there are issues we have to address as a nation.
“We have developed alot of capacities, initiatives, we can begin to look at all the operations using national approach to address the issues of insecurity.”(NAN)