WHAT A REVELATION: A MUST READ! Senators Saleh, a retired army general said, “What I am going to say is based on my experience as an insider. Our duty here as senators of the federal republic transcends the extension of state of emergency. Our duty of oversight should ensure that high standards must be maintained in addition to acquiring all necessary equipment required to maintain a strong force. “When the Chief of Defense Staff was appointed in January this year, the service chiefs made a categorical statement that within three months they will crush Boko haram. But unfortunately, what we are seeing is a complete deterioration of the situation, so it is incumbent on us to find out why that deterioration. We have heard about our soldiers’ mutiny, it is also our responsibility to find out why that is happening. “For us to understand why that is happening, we need to go back to the Babangida (Gen. Ibrahim Babangida) era. After the 1990 Okar coup, the Federal Government of Nigeria systematically and comprehensively disarmed the military. “All the tanks, all the artillery guns were disarmed and locked up. All the aircraft were parked in Ilorin and other places, flying stopped, training stopped to ensure regime security not national security. “All the good officers of the Nigerian army were hounded out of the military. And there was over concentration of power at the centre which was the army headquarters. Prior to that, General Officers Commanding used to have training and maneuver grants. “They had the power and responsibility to train their troops and battalions and to ensure an efficient logistics and service support system. All that stopped. Everything was from Army headquarters, everything was from Air Force headquarters, everything was from Naval headquarters. “The attendant result was decay. Training was no longer going on at the battalion level, soldiers lost their skills and since then, no additional military equipment was purchased for the Nigerian Army. Even things as little as machine guns were in short supply, ammunition was in short supply. “An individual soldier’s professional skill was to be a matchman, to shoot and hit his target but can he do that if he has no ammunition? We have a duty to rebuild this army, to rebuild this armed forces, and unless we understand these basic facts, we are not going anywhere. “Also, after some time the fighting doctrine of the Nigerian Army was changed. We were essentially British brought up. That means we knew how much materials we had, the tasks before us and so on. But along the line during the Obasanjo (Chief Olusegun Obasanjo) regime, General Obasanjo brought Americans here and our doctrine approach was change to warfare. “I make bold to tell you that up till today nobody understands that. I know it is a strategic concept of warfare but in Nigeria we are applying it to the operational and tactical level. It has created a lot of confusion within our army. “Apart from that, our involvement in foreign operations and the kind of training we give to our soldiers for operations was a kind of defensive posture. You don’t kill until you are killed, you don’t attack until you are attacked. “That also helped to change the orientation of some of our soldiers. Then again, I must mention here fraud within the ministry of defense, fraud within the military service systems themselves has contributed a lot to diminishing our fighting capability. “Further to that again, we have the issue of our combat service support. Because of fraudulent activities, we monetized everything. Out supply services, our medical services are completely inefficient and are unable to support the fighting in the North East now. Right now I stand to question how our soldiers are being fed.” Speaking earlier, Chairman Senate Committee on Defence, Senator George Thompson Sekibo said that the essence of the meeting was to know why the issue of insurgence persists in the country and the conflicting reports on the fight against Boko Haram in Borno, Adamawa and Yobe states. Senator Sekibo said, “Nigerians are worried over the security station. Rather than abate its worsening. The spokesperson of the military and the press are contradicting each other. We want to find out the true situation of the attacks. “You will observe that the joint committee of the National Assembly on Defence met here with the Chief of Defence staff and other security chiefs from 10am to 3pm to get situation reports on insurgency problem in the three affected north eastern states as part of follow up to the approval of state of emergency in the affected state in May this year. “We have heard several stories from the media on alleged upper hand of the insurgents against the military and the military telling us here that such stories were speculative, making it difficult for us to know which of the stories to believe. “The military In fact debunked stories of major cities being taken over by the insurgents in the three states , though admitted that the insurgents had one of the towns as stronghold which according to them would be taken over from them in a matter of time from now. “We have also been informed by them that presidency is doing more for them in terms of procurement of new war ammunition and improve in welfare packages and other things being done to boost the morale of those at the war front. “But the committee has resolved to reach out to Mr President for direct interaction on the national problem with a view to knowing what and what are being done to fight the war to its logical conclusion which will definitely afford us the opportunity to put in our own pieces of advice. “We also resolved to submit all our findings at this meeting today to the respective chambers on resumption about 12 days to come”. Senator Sekibo said the Joint Committee wanted to know, “Who has captured where. We are worried about the contradictions. We want to know, is the military still equipped or not, what is the state of our equipment, are you having difficulties accessing funds, if there are funds to buy the equipment the moral of the soldiers will raise. “State of emergency is in the third stage and things are worse. Do we evacuate people there and go for full scale war, were the funds released to you? We should know the problem. We at National Assembly will not rest on our oars. Some of our people at the National Assembly can’t go back to our states,” he stated.
Posted on: Thu, 04 Sep 2014 20:31:52 +0000
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