The Chief of Army Staff (COAS), Lt. Gen. Azubuike Ihejirika at the weekend in Kaduna, stated that crushing insurgency was to ensure national security and not religious war. The Army Chief offered the explanation during the closing ceremony of a workshop organized for Nigerian Army Commanding Officers from North-West and North-East part of the country at Division one Headquarters, Kaduna.
Ihejirika, who was represented by the GOC, Division one, Nigerian Army, Maj. Gen. Garba Wahab said: “Like I keep on saying, what we are facing right now is not an issue of religion, because there is no religion that allows any individual to slaughter a fellow human being. So, it is not a religious issue. If you understand what we are facing, you will get a solution to it.
Whatever you plan for or hope for, there must be massive friction to your plan and reality on ground. You have to plan for those frictions.
“If there is a country that should not have any problem in the world, it is Somalia, because 99.9 percent of the people of Somalia are Somalis, 98.5.7 percent are Muslims; so, you can imagine.
“We can’t continue to do the same thing. The adversary has advisers, the adversary has sympthisers, who are as well-read as you are. They are human beings who will sit down on a computer and access it.
“Even if they don’t understand what the Nigerian Army is doing, they can read about the US Army and British Army on the internet on the way they think. “There are some documents that are coming out now, most from the CIA of the 50s.
“If somebody can get through all these things, he needs not to listen to you; all he needs to do is to see how it will work. So, gentlemen, you have to work hard, you have to be ingenious, you have to be bold and aggressive.
“You cannot afford to be timid. The man there is heartless. If somebody can grab a fellow human being, put him on the ground and slaughter the person like a goat and information has gone out that any security person grabbed should be treated that way, then, you should know that you must be bold and aggressive in all you do,” the Army Chief stressed.
