New Telegraph

Service chiefs should not rely on military power, intelligence –Ladi Thompson

To overcome insecurity in the nation, the newly appointed Service Chiefs has been admonished to look beyond military might and intelligence gathering as the present war form confronting the nation is not the conventional type. Strategist thinker and security expert, Rev Ladi Thompson, who gave the advice, also warned that more attacks were in the offing by the Boko Haram insurgents. While disclosing that the change of guard by President Muhammadu Buhari was something that was bound to happen sooner or later, he said: “But it will also be reckoned much later as a necessary step in the learning curve of our nation and the new global war form plaguing us.

“The president by nature has proven himself to be a loyal supporter of his appointees and this move was probably precipitated by the exasperated calls from the Nigerian polity as the security situation seemed to worsen despite his continued assurances.” He charged the new armed forces helmsmen to realise that the systemic flaw in the strategy that relies on military prowess as the primary solution to asymmetrical warfare and hybrid threats otherwise they would fail in their pursuits as their predecessors.

Thompson, who is also the pastor of Living Waters Unlimited Church, Lagos, warned of more attacks by Boko Haram insurgents to prove a point of their potency and scare them. He added: “Sad to say that more lives may be lost in the process of this education exercise.

To prove a point the extremist will likely mount some more audacious attacks with clinical precision in the weeks ahead to announce their virility to the world.” While commending the professionalism of Nigeria armed forces, he, however, said they should realise that military contribution to combating the present state of insecurity is at best 34 per cent.

He said: “The renewed vigour of our troops will translate into some high points but the new war form will continue to eat into our fragile unity unless we finally recognise its hydra-headed formation and multiple fronts of contention. “Beyond information gathering and inter agency cooperation we must invest in counter narratives and force multipliers to level the playing field. To win the war, however, we would need to go further to educate the masses on how to recognise the otherwise invisible fronts on which battles are being fought.

“It is at this point that Nigeria would have no option but to smoke out the moles that have been hindering us from within. For all these, we will not be able to cry Uhuru until the religious institutes are codified, harnessed and activated to make the average citizen a factor in this new war form. “I want to believe that Nigeria will eventually triumph but we need to know that it would never have been such a costly one if we had invested a lot more into research, concatenation and consensus building.”

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