A support group of the All Progressives Congress, APC, has
called on President Muhammadu Buhari to immediately relieve the nation’s
service chiefs of their jobs.
The group said the sack of the service chiefs had become
imperative to pave way for the injection of fresh ideas into the country’s
security architecture.
Dr. Jubrin Bichi, the National Convener of the group, known
as APC Support Core, was reacting to a statement by the National Democratic
Front (NDF), alleging a sinister motive to destabilize the government through
an abrupt removal of the heads of security agencies.
Bichi, in a press statement on Sunday, insisted that
allowing the service chiefs to continue in their positions given the security
problems confronting the country would not be in the best interest of anyone.
He commended the service chiefs for their contributions in
the fight against insecurity in the country but insisted that fresh hands were
needed to tackle the problems.
The statement reads, “Ordinarily, we would not have
responded to this unsubstantiated and inciting statement by this faceless group
under the aegis of National Democratic Front, NDF, but as a group very loyal to
our respected party, the APC and having read the statement purportedly
attributed to this faceless group, we feel duty-bound to respond so as not to
mislead our president and our party that have been saddled with the mandate by
Nigerians to pilot the affairs of the country for the next four years.
“We believe strongly that the service chiefs have tried
their best to restore security in the country since their assumption of office
but given the dimension in which insecurity has assumed in the country,we feel
that its high time fresh ideas and hands were injected.
“Nobody is an island in any area of responsibility. No
doubt,the service chiefs have tried what they know how to do best but given
that our president has been given fresh four-year mandate,we believe it would
be in his interest and also in the best interest of the nation for him to start
the renewed term with new set of security chiefs with fresh ideas.
“The only way to get fresh ideas for the President to
address the security challenges is to remove the incumbent service chiefs to
give room for younger officers to grow.
“The nation should do away with unproductive tenure
elongation in areas where fresh ideas are needed.
“We know the way the military organisations operate. Those
with fresh ideas dare not come out against their superiors or else they risk
premature retirement from service. So the current service chiefs should go to
allow officers with fresh ideas address our alarming security issues.
“While we commend the service chiefs for their services to
their motherland so far, we appealed to our dear president to immediate sack
these service Chiefs who are already in their retirement years but are still
kept in service by the President in what many have interpreted as partisan
needs.
Their continued stay in office no doubt,is gradually
weakening the morale in the armed forces as three sets of officers have now had
their careers stagnated.”
While praying the president to initiate new action to halt
killings and kidnappings of Nigerian citizens,the APC Support Core Group
maintained that insecurity is being sustained unabated by sheer negligence or exhaustion
of ideas by the nation’s service chiefs.
“While we will not want to respond to issues of security as
being steered by a supposedly sponsored group in its mission for self
aggrandizement, the APC Support Core Group feel constrained to advise where
necessary given that our president and by extension,our party have the mandate
of Nigerians to provide good and quality governance devoid of self
consideration above national interest.
“The deliberate ploy by the so called NDF to heat up the
polity unnecessarily with its unfounded claim ‘that this same opposition had
been named in a plot to pressure President Muhammadu Buhari to drop the service
chiefs so that a new crop of military chiefs that are sympathetic to the
opposition will be appointed following which they will overthrow the government
and hold a shabby transition to hand over power to the opposition is uncalled
for,” he added.
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