President Muhammadu Buhari is to reportedly to meet Nigeria’s service chiefs today, June 2, as their new Commander in Chief.
The main agenda is said to be the fight against Boko Haram. Vanguard reports with reference to its sources that some of the tops might be asked to voluntary retire for the new appointees to take up their positions.
It has been obtained that the president’s idea to move the military command center from Abuja to Maiduguri did not receive the support of the high command. Therefore Buhari needs those ready to work in accordance with the new strategy.
A top military source who pleaded for anonymity told Leadership:
“It is an attempt to frustrate and humiliate our chiefs before sacking them. Some is us have analysed the speech and our conclusion is (that) President Buhari did not appreciate the efforts put in place in fighting the terrorists.
“In the whole speech, he did not commend us at all but instead seemed to agree with the cynics that we have not been observing human rights in our operations and he went further to praise our counterparts in neighbouring countries who are not in the theatre of operation.
“As if that was not enough, President Muhammadu Buhari said he wants our command and control centre to relocate to Maiduguri; what for? We are involved in about nine operations in the country; now if the directive is carried out, then our focus will primarily be on terrorism at the expense of other criminal activities such as kidnapping, armed robbery, piracy, pipeline vandalism and others.”
“How do we ask our service chiefs to be in the same place with their commanders? Where is the respect? If he wants them to go (retire), he should simply tell them. Instead, he is coming with blackmail: if they refuse to go, he would say he wanted them to remain but they ignored his order; and if they go, they might be subjected to humiliation and frustration before being kicked out of the service.”
Another highly-placed source spoke with The Nation on the issues. He said that Buhari’s Monday closed-door meeting with Colonel Sambo Dasuki, the national security adviser, was aimed at assessing the security situation in the country.
A presidential aide disclosed:
“The meeting with the NSA was one-on-one; nobody knew what transpired. As at the time of filing this report, there was anxiety over a likely shake-up of the military and security agencies.”
One more source also spoke about the possible “shake-up”:
“There is suspense everywhere on how the President may overhaul the nation’s military and security systems. The military and security agencies have also adopted a cautious approach in reacting to recent Boko Haram challenges in Borno and Yobe states.
“Everyone is waiting for the President to unfold his shake-up plans. We hope he will do so after the debriefing session.”
As for the further plans of Nigeria’s new president, his spokesman Garba Shehu confirmed that Buhari would visit Niger on Wednesday and Chad on Thursday to discuss the security issues with the allies. It will be his first trip abroad in the capacity of the president.
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